He Looks At Me
by indiefran
Summary: Christian wakes to a life without Syed. Can they let each other go? Told in present day and flashbacks. First four chapters set in December, the rest post-wedding. Reviews very welcome.
1. Chapter 1

I can smell him. I lay here where he once was and he's in my skin. He's always in my skin. Wrapped in our sheets, I half close my eyes to the darkness and I let my body fool my mind into believing he's still here. My mind is aware of the trick but I consider letting myself fall. In the heart of the lie, I feel him next to me. My arms wrap his waist and I press my nose gently into the thick hair that falls lazily across his cheek. Out in the cold of the truth, it's been four days since he left.

...

"Just _be _with me", I hear myself say. "Choose me." And I feel weak. I know he can't and I know he won't but I say it, and though I hate myself for the words, for the truth, they were always going to spill out. It was just a question of when.

As he stands in front of me, finally grasping the courage to be a coward, it seems I've decided now was that time. The words that had been dormant on my tongue for months slip from me, with necessity, because his words, the one's we both knew were waiting, rush from him: "I can't do this anymore."

The future had always taken his breath from him, I knew, but now it was crushing him. The day where he would have to choose was so close _she_ was now practically in the room with us. Jealousy, sadness, bitterness, possession...I felt it all outside, but in here, when it was just us, I barely thought of her. She had the title, the ring, the public recognition, but to me, she never had him. I had his body. I had his truth. I had the flicker in his eyes when he would let himself feel happiness. I had his real smile he gave only to me. He was mine. I shared him, I knew, but in every real way, in having the parts that mattered, I knew _I _had him...until the day came that I would have none of him. Now even when we were alone, we never really were. The guilt was so deep, and '_one_ day' was so near to _this_ day that even once the flat door shut, the noise, their faces, their shame, couldn't be contained behind it. Sneakily, cruelly, they had crept in unseen. They were in him.

He looks at me.

...

I lean into him and I can feel his heat against me. His little breaths as he feels me, as I give him everything I have. He writhes under my weight, softly. His dark lips part and he waits for me, as if he's grasping our air with a need for me. My hips move for him, slowly, deeply. I kiss his neck and I burn as he moans through me. I could taste him forever. He looks at me. I have him.

...

"It's...for the best." The tremble in his voice betrays him.

I let out a laugh, incredulous that he thinks there's still a point to this lie. As if there ever was. His dark eyes cloud and he brings his shoulders inward as if unable to share the space between us, as if I am now something he fears. He drags his gaze from mine and I see him slipping from me. He's back behind the wall he's built, away from me, where he's alone but safe. Staring down at his hands as if he'll crumble if he remembers I'm watching, he hardens, resolute in the lie. I feel nothing but anger that he has done this.

I just want to hold him.

He looks at me. I've lost him.

...

The first signs of daylight creep through the blinds and I pull the sheets over me. In these brief moments, half in dreams, half in life, I can't bear the cold and in desperation grasp for the warmth I crave. I choose the lie. My arms stretch out and his skin sits beneath my fingers, his body stirring closer as it searches for mine. I press my mouth within a breath of his and his eyes flicker as he wakes to me. I stroke his lower back and he murmurs as I trace the dip of his spine where I placed my lips last night. He looks at me with a smile. He never left.


	2. Chapter 2

The light dips and I sense the trick is starting. I know if I press my eyes shut, I can block the day and he'll be next to me. Even if for the briefest of moments, there will be a time when he will be wrapped under me, in my arms. He will be warm. The beauty of his skin will shine and radiate as the tips of my fingers explore him, as if he is changed from the previous day. As if he is the same but new, made only for me. Waiting. He will come to life under my touch.

Get up.

I tell myself again, get up. My eyes open. He disappears and my hands find themselves clinging to the pillow at my side. It mocks me. I mock myself for so easily falling to the edge of the lie again. Get up.

...

My legs move. One in front of the other. And again, I teach myself. The first walk from my flat door since that stranger butchered my body has nothing on the first walk since _he _butchered my insides. It physically hurts as if he had beaten me anyway. A fist, a kick have nothing on Syed Masood.

Walk. Breathe. I remind myself how to exist.

I've not been into work since he left. I've embraced avoidance, and thanks to a shift swap with Jane, my first act of bravery in five days is designed around avoiding him. Perhaps if I dedicate my life to the scheduling, I will successfully avoid being close to him but without him for the rest of my life.

As I turn down the street, thinking of the memories that will be waiting, laced through the Unit walls, I find the biggest reminder of all standing in front of me. I feel his feet stop, abrupt. Then shuffle, as if every piece of him is forever infected with the uncertainty of staying or going. I see the breeze lift the strand of hair only I touch, as if doing my job for me now I can't. I hear his lips part, as they do when he has no words. He's real.

I take a breath in, noticeably but unable to stop myself for sheer need. I'm not ready for this.

I've been drinking and not sleeping for almost a week, and I look like it. I feel pathetic.

I look at him. He isn't without effect. He seems tired, and I let myself wonder for a second if I am not the only one who has been left with a ghost in the darkness. I've never been there in life, but maybe I'm there in his bed in dream. I ban speculation of whether he has been choosing the truth or the lie from my mind.

We pause. Neither have words. It is not just that I have nothing to say...because I have everything to say, but that I am taken with looking. I have no strength to form polite words; I am dedicated to the impoliteness of a stare. I _search _for him. He shifts, his shoulders fall. He gives me half a second of himself and then he is gone. He can't look at me.

...

"It's just wrong."

"What are you talking about Sy?"

Our sitting backs pressed against the wall, he looks straight at me.

"It's disgusting...I'm sorry. To me, it just is."

I look down at the sheets, our naked bodies half under.

"A grown man should not be putting chocolate spread on his toast. You have the eating habits of a twelve year old." He feigns indignation, waving his hand to the bed to gesture his 'disgust' at my plate. He can't hide his smile.

"Not quite," I smirk. I take the flavour on my finger and cover the dip in his chest, my lips brushing my new plate before my tongue tastes him. He laughs, as if he knew my next move before I had even thought it. It is a laugh that reverberates through his chest gently; I feel his happiness through my lips.

He places his fingers at the back of my neck, lovingly dancing through the base of my hair as I brush his stomach with my open mouth. I feel him tense and relax under me with one murmur. I move lower, unable to see his face but he is smiling.

...

He glances up, offering me another moment in his eyes. I take it, greedily. I wonder how we have ever got to this point. I wonder how I ever thought we could end up anywhere else. I open my mouth, ignorant to the words that will be waiting, but needing to say something, needing to bring him back to me. I open my mouth.

"Syed."

I turn my head to see the owner of the voice that cut into our air. The future dances down the street to greet him. Beautiful, blissful, she stands there. The moment I have his gaze ends. He looks at her.


	3. Chapter 3

I've lost his smell. I am clean. All it takes is washed sheets, and he is gone. An affair's isolation means it is laced with secrecy when it exists...and it is easily erased once done. I am not left with photographs to tear, memories of our life together to erase, or words of regret from those we know. No one knew, no one saw; I am not left with the reflection of our life in a single person's eyes. No one ever knew us together so maybe we never were. I train myself to take in the thought. The past is easily erased; I must simply learn to cope with the present. I get up.

...

"Do you need a hand with the desserts?"

Choked with the excruciating sound of our polite mutterings, I think of how quickly we've become colleagues again.

He is already back to pretending. It has been a long time since his pretence was dedicated to me; I have for so long been the cause of it.

"No, thanks. I'm fine." I find myself joining in with the illusion of self-deception. It seems he is not the only one who has learnt new skills because of us.

I wonder how something so reliant on deceit and so easily reduced to denial could be the truest thing I have ever had.

...

"Come home with me", I whisper, low.

He stops. My head rests behind him, taking his air as if it were my own.

"Pack it in, will you?", he flusters, beautifully. "Ian's right in the office."

"Well I wasn't inviting him. I don't think it matters he can't hear me," I play.

The tips of my fingers trace the base of his neck, slowly, and he leans back to me, fitting on instinct.

"Okay", he breathes.

...

His eyes move from the work between us to find mine.

"Is there anything I can do?"

Let yourself be this. Let yourself love me. Because I do; and for the life of me, I can't stop. No one on earth could love you more. Let yourself love me. I beg you. I am so in love with you I swear you are part of me. If you tell me you don't want to be, if you tell me nothing or tell me everything by your silence, I don't think it will still ever be possible to set you free. So love me. Let yourself. Please.

"No, nothing. Get off home."

I lift the trays alone, having found myself bending to make his life easier once again. I delude myself; as if anything I have done, even the lies and the soothing for him have made any part of his life easier. That look in his eye, the sadness, the emptiness was never there before I set my mind to him. His body never looked so weak, so broken until my hands had covered it. I allow myself to be absolved for a moment with the thought that perhaps he has become this not because of my presence but because of my absence. I believe it because if I am honest, he has left me the same.

...

"What_ are_ you doing?"

He bobs head-first under the sheets, immersed. His arse floats in the air. He looks glorious.

"I've lost my..."

"Mind?" I laugh, as if I wouldn't pay for this sight.

"Boxers."

"Oh, yeah", I say with innocence. "That's because I've taken them hostage."

He pops his head out from under its cover, the beauty of confusion etched over his stance. His hair is dropped over his eyes, everywhere; a mess that takes my breath from me.

"Excuse me?"

"The ransom's another hour in bed."

"I already ran straight out after work. If I don't make it home for dinner they'll send out a search party." I blink at the familiarity of the words; I smile internally at the regret that is now laced through them.

"Then you'll be eating dinner with no underwear," I grin. "They'll be awkward questions later."

"From who exactly?!"

"In my mind Zainab numbers your underwear."

He laughs, genuinely. I lean forward and whisper in his ear, "I dread to think what'll happen when she finds out number twelve is missing."

"Half an hour", he warns, with that smile. My body feels his crawl back to mine and place the beginnings of a kiss on my lower lip. Of late he has conceded every time.

...

I lay now fully aware of the delusion in which I have entered. That his need to hide within the comfort of pretence was the source of so much anguish between us fills me with the taste of hypocrisy; I was never aware before of how at the point of desperation, pretence is all you have. It is your friend.

My new friend whispers how easy it is to forget: he was never really here; he should be rid, quickly. It is a lie. He is everywhere.

It is a truth that lives without the evidence of processed stills or the knowledge of others. It screams out eternally, the rawness of a past so unending that if I were to forget for a heartbeat all it would take is one moment with him now and I would be undone again.

I think of tomorrow. I prepare myself for the unravelling that will occur, once again. He will look at me. And I will fall.


	4. Chapter 4

I murmur through the shadows of yesterday, the beginnings of today. The world creeps forwards whilst I am not watching. It continues to. I cannot stop it.

His life with her, my life without him, will sing through every hour of the day. Reminders of it consume existence. They are everywhere. It is deafening.

The sheets wrap around my bones, seeking sanctuary for another moment.

There is no safety within my own bed. He lies next to me, dreaming, smiling. He will not leave. I attempt escape; I get up. My body moves, fully aware he will be waiting for me wherever it takes me. Outside, he will be real.

...

Another day crawls forward, and another day plagued with the scent of matrimony is endured: smiles too wide to be real; plans too perfect to be more than fantasy.

The office is draped with colours, lists, words; all signs of a culture that is not mine, parts of a life that I cannot provide. He sits amongst it, small. In the words that he gives them, in the expressions that he shows, he offers all necessary evidence of willingness.

To me he looks lost. I have always thought that only I could see him. From the first moment he showed me his truth, a part of me has treasured that that was only for me. If the day came that he would let the mask slip for them in the way it must, I know that it would still only be my sight that could see all that there is in him.

Now I find myself unable to decipher what sits, in patience, behind his eyes. I do not know if I see in him what is there or what I wish to. Perhaps I see myself.

Hidden behind what they want from him, I listen to the silence. Though every sign he presents tells me otherwise, I let my heart ask my mind if he needs rescuing. I swear I can hear him crying out.

...

His eyes are taken with his hands, grasped for comfort between legs grateful for rest.

"Home's just...hard at the minute."

I am overwhelmed by how lost he is. There is no greater desire on earth than mine to take that from him.

"We don't have to talk if you don't want...we could just sit."

My words are rewarded with the moving of his gaze; it fixes on me, as if in awe of having its need caught out.

"Mum..." he gives me. "I don't know if she...if she wants the baby."

It has been seventeen days since he last shared my bed. In his fast I have found an intimacy beyond which even his body can bring. His eyes stare into me and he chooses me to take from him what he needs to give. He brings me closer than I have ever been, with barely a touch.

...

A room separates us but my eyes cannot help but fix on him through the window glass. From afar, I look at him, quiet. There is a loneliness in him that has never been more palpable, lurking out through the gentle obedience of his happiness. He is truly beautiful to me and I see them crush him, daily. I think of what will be left of him when they are done. I cannot stand it.

I miss you. I know your fear and I will protect you.

...

"Christian, I'm sorry."

"It's nothing."

"I hurt you." He looks at me as if he fears my breaking, as if he could not bear it if I did.

"You didn't, _really_."

He is unaware that I ache not when he gives me his touch, but when it is absent.

"The bruising hasn't gone yet", he says in a whisper, his head low. "We don't have to..."

I stroke his hair away, attempting to soothe the concern from him. My fingers dance down his cheek, resting at the base, lifting his chin to face me. I tell him with my eyes that I need him.

He traces his hand down my chest, the tips of his fingers caressing the dark signs of a memory I wish to forget. I hear it fade just by the feel of him. My skin lives under his touch.

Small cuts, fading bruises...I feel his soft lips sketch the line they make beneath him. He heals me with each kiss. I have never felt more loved.

...

The gentle laugh, the agreeable noise, the move of the head; I think through the day's pretences that lace through his duty. Faithfully, blindly, he continues to run towards our ending.

It is in the desperation that I drown. That he is trapped in a cage that only I can see and that he will do nothing to escape. He drowns with me yet he willingly falls. I want nothing more than to save him. And I will.

I forgive myself for the truth that in doing so, I will be saving myself.


	5. Chapter 5

**Thanks so much if you took the time to review the previous chapters – lovely to read and always keep me posting. **

_**The wedding has now passed, events occurring exactly as onscreen. **_

_**Christian wakes up the day after the wedding... **_

**... **

Darkened eyes blink. Flutter. Open, close. My mind attempts to soothe me with the temporary illusion I need to wake. It did not happen. He has not gone.

Within a fleeting moment of day, I am too aware of the truth. It vibrates through my skin, my bones ache from it. Each breath is trapped, heavy, by the sheer loss of him. I am crushed by the weight of his absence. There is no room for the comfort of self-delusion now. That he will be gone, always, is a reality too roar to deny.

It is reality that mocks me. On the day all fantasy ended, I was given the truth I had been waiting for: who he was, who he wanted. It brings me little comfort. There is only one truth that matters now. He is hers. That the pain of our reality is laced with the hope of his confession only serves to keep him here when I need to learn to let him go.

Let him go.

I think of him in every moment.

...

My body finds itself outside his home. I am painfully aware that he is not there and that when he returns he will be with his wife. Past the bricks and stone I see the comfort of lazed furnishings, the conjugality of daily meals, the intimacy of shared beds. I feel the pain of memories that have not yet even occurred. I cannot tear my eyes from them regardless.

...

The tingle of the metal hitting the cups pierces me into consciousness. My hearing wakes to the sound of domesticity and my eyelids stir to the sight of him.

Turned away from me in his task, he stands in beautiful certainty. Soft skin dances under the kitchen glow, endless. His black boxers cling to him, and he moves, belonging. The blade of his shoulder arches, in slight; he reaches for what I need. Muscles that sit in strength beneath his smooth back play gently as he in willing thought, completes my welcome.

The bulb shines over him in necessity, marking his path in the darkness of winter day break. We do not need the sun. His golden skin glows in the light, bathed as if perfection only in my surroundings. My home in this moment is his.

I am discovered as he turns, feet stilled as he catches my gaze. He stands, with a growing smile, a cup in each hand.

"Did I wake you?"

...

Masochistic feet are told to move as I break myself from my torturous gaze. The door opens, as I turn. It is too late to save myself.

I freeze, at her sight. Unknowingly watched, she is small, pitiable. I am too aware of the danger of that forgiving falsehood. From afar, I stare.

I wonder how my soul can despise what bought him into the world for me. I question whether my newfound hatred of her is healthier than my continual love for him. Both are infected with the same pointlessness, yet I cling to both.

...

We lay. I find myself in the moments my body now craves near to that which go before. The moments when he is mine, in which we shift and moan, that fall, stumbling, into those before he is gone, in which we are still, quiet.

There is a breath of space between us, my arms conforming to the order to rest within myself. I cannot help but crave the end to this smallest of distances, though fully aware what it has taken for him to be this close.

Wrapped in the gentle husk of his air, he breathes next to me, softly. As I settle for the comfort his peace brings me, I sense him start to move.

Half in dreams, his body finds my own.

His arms stretch out, in need, hands grasping unaware yet knowingly for my sides. With a relaxed murmur, his head nuzzles into my chest, his nose pressed against my skin. Soft hands press my waist, clinging, warm.

I hush my rapid heart that beats beneath his leaning cheek. My breath holds, as if each subsequent second of my life is dependent on this frame not breaking. He is wrapped in me.

...

I think of his face as he left me, and I just want him to be okay.

I question the words I dedicated to dragging his life to mine, the tears I spent begging him to be himself for me. In the final moments, I saw the waste. It did not matter at all. Standing in front of me, small, in fear, the desperate need that had burned through my sanity became an empty shadow of itself.

As I let my need depart, I allowed myself to embrace his. Past foolish simplicity of right and truth dissolved as I fell into those dark pleading eyes. Then...I understood what he needed from me.

I no longer simply loved him. In that moment, I saw him.

I can taste him as I think of the final words I did not speak. As my silent lips pressed his brow I told him all the things I had never said; I told him what he had needed to hear from me from the start.

I love you enough to let you go.

That I cannot bear to is a truth that I must keep only as mine.


	6. Chapter 6

He leans down, his bare chest looming over. His brown eyes shine, still evident in the darkness. He moves, slowly. The beginnings of sweat form just below his brow, and a thick lock of hair falls carelessly over his sight as he writhes. He doesn't need to see. The heat guides him. In love, in lust, he moans. A deep moan, it runs through him. He leans down and caresses the hair under his fingers. His warm mouth parts, lower, caressing the breast with his dark lips.

I gasp for air. I wake.

My heart hammers as if my chest will tear, and a bile taste fills me.

Endless days have passed since he became hers, endless days have broken with dreams of them.

....

I need the cold, and I walk. There's a stillness in the winter air that numbs me, I allow it to. Houses, faces, noise...normalcy passes by in the shape of them, I barely see. His absence leaves me frozen, hushed. The blood is cool within my frame, the skin dulled. I rest within the safety of not feeling.

A vibration shakes me; I feel the protection slip from me.

Tiny hairs begin to tremor, stand. A slow heat pulses through my heart, pounds. The nerves that run through my core dance, alive.

I feel him. My skin senses him.

He is back.

...

"Have you heard from James?" He asks as if he thinks he should.

"No," I draw out, paused by the reminder that I ever let another into our bed. "I'm not expecting to...not yet anyway."

"I'm sorry..." He shows undeserved guilt; I will never blame him for my loving him.

"Sy I didn't mean...It's not your fault. It was me, all me. I was trying to move on...and I couldn't."

"Because I wasn't letting you?"

"Because I didn't want to."

My thumb traces his paused lips and I draw the pattern mine follow. His heat craved, my mouth tastes him, in compulsion.

The truth falls from me, in our kiss. I breathe into him, unheard: "I could never want anyone else."

...

And once again, we are together.

I do not question how it is that I am so quickly, easily faced with him.

My feet simply find my way to him, as if on instinct. If he is near, I find myself there. I debate how long it will take my body to learn to ignore that which it is drawn to. It is no longer my body to find.

...

"Mmmmm. _What are you doing?_", he questions, low.

Rested bare in the candle dust, the sheet drapes his thighs.

"Nothing at all", I murmur, through parted lips. I lay kisses, slow, along the stretch of his naked spine.

I swear I cannot stop touching him. Any moment in which I am not, when my hands do not feel him, my lips do not kiss him, my tongue does not taste him, is one in which I literally ache. It can only be an addiction. I tell myself it is because so much of the time I am proscribed from giving him my touch. I am fully aware that if we lived in a world in which I could, I would be in exactly the same state I find myself now.

"Must be my imagination then."

He is gorgeous, clearly. The most breathtakingly beautiful soul I have ever been near.

His caramel skin glows, golden. Twenty-five, pure youth that leaves me aching. That slim dip of the waist, slight. Thick, dark waves of hair, unravelled in ecstasy, in mess. Deep brown eyes I lose myself in daily, in the sensual, in the innocence. The smooth of his spine...

"Yep." My mouth drags, up, to meet his neck's base. "You have a filthy one. You should get that seen to."

....

In never leaving my mind for a moment, I have forgotten him entirely. His sight takes my breath from me, his gentle frame owns my sanity.

"You're back."

Faced with him, I am incapable of releasing any words other than those that spill out from the shock I feel.

"Yeah," he draws out slowly. It seems neither of our minds can do more than deal with the literal events of this very moment. The past, the future, the screaming of a heart...that our bodies are again within the same air, that he is here in front of me, is all there is. It is in itself too much.

Dark brown eyes dip, and the soft stubble of a cheek bucks; he tells me his mind is full, and he scrambles for words in his thoughts. "How are you?", he settles on.

"Okay." I lie.

His lip tremors and I feel my hand start to move; his comfort is its instinct.

"Christian, I..."


	7. Chapter 7

**Thanks so much for alerts and reviews. All lovely and great to hear what you think. **

_**Though all chapters follow from the last, this part is a direct continuation of part six. **_

**... **

"I..."

Darkest brown eyes flicker, dragged to comply in the struggle. Lips part.

"I didn't know whether...whether you'd be...around."

I find myself so easily back here. My heart forgets with the sight of him that anything has changed. It rushes back to him, fleeing the guilt of ever having tried to leave.

"I'm here. I couldn't..."

His ring glistens. Their bags, heavy with what has gone and what will come, lay at his feet. Brown eyes weigh with sorrow. Everything has changed.

The realisation burns as if it pierces the skin.

...

"Ow!"

"Christian, are you alright?!"

"Shit!"

I attack the smoke with a clasped tea towel, and curse the oven for its menace. The smell of burning floats away; it takes my hopes of our first meal together with it.

"It's alright...," he comforts warmly, soft hands placed on my back.

"I'm a bloody caterer. This is just embarrassing." That his presence was all it took to steal my focus is the only source of shame. His scent in my air, his body near...I lose all sense of anything else. It is a command that shakes my centre but I would do nothing to escape.

He bends, in clear amusement, over my crouched stance and badly hidden sulk.

"Yeah well, it's a good job I didn't come for your food."

"Just my body then?" I turn, with a smile he so easily builds.

"Christian...," he shakes his head genially, clouded with a blush.

I am up on my feet and kissing him. Anything but this has been forgotten.

...

She runs towards me, with a hug. An internal laugh escapes me, despite myself. For one moment I had let my mind forget that now, wherever he was, she would be. They are entirely each others.

Her arm finds their way around his waist, her touch is his. Dreams are suddenly everything; they turn against me now, come alive in front of me.

The air that wraps me is bitter, it clings to my skin and I revel in it. To be numb is no longer enough. I need to remind myself that I am here. Faced with the sight of them, my mind needs my body to tell it what is real.

Dreams. What once formed a comforting lie, born from a memory, now encloses an irrational truth, birthed from his future. I _know_ his pleasure. I know the shape my body takes is the cause. I _know_, by simply her presence, that that will not change.

Yet she looks at him, and I ignore myself.

"The Maldives was amazing, wasn't it babe?"

I imagine a satisfaction he simply cannot feel.

...

I look down at him in the haze, flushed cheeks, lust heavy lids, stare up at me through breathless gasps. I freeze in his warmth.

"Christian..."

Heated hands on my back cling. Lips on my collar bone hover.

"I need you," he breathes.

...

She places a kiss onto him and his eyes slide to mine, in a dash. They rush to me in a plea, begging mine for answers as to how to get through this moment...and the endless others like it we know too well that will follow. I have nothing.

I am made for his happiness, for the comforting of his fears, for the fixing of him when he breaks...but I have nothing.

She beams.

I cannot tear myself away from the sight and I know my mind will need to be forced not to choose this pain, daily.

It is as if the hurt that goes with him is all I have left now, and I cannot bear to let the final piece go. If the choice was between the pain of remembering and the numbness of forgetting, I would choose the pain every time.

"Better go babe, the in-laws are waiting! We'll see you soon."

I hear the door shut, it traps my breath. They are inside their home. I am outside alone.


	8. Chapter 8

_**Unlike the other chapters, this one is told in **__**Syed POV**__**. He got home yesterday and it seemed a good time to see what the little fella was thinking... **_

The sun edges through, teasing the sign of another beginning. Today I wake different. I am a husband in his home. I am new.

The tingle of dreams leaves my side and the morning air wakes my flesh. I need to wake. Warm soothing of the past tempts me back, I ignore its song. I cannot hear it.

A figure sleeps within my grasp, in peace. The sound of her breaths says memories no longer matter, she is what is real.

I am lucky. I remind myself. She is beautiful. I teach myself.

The noise quietens, the pain weakens. There is no cell which is unaware of the change, it is prepared.

My feet find the floor, in routine. I look for prayer. I pray to love her, like I should. I pray to forget him, like I must.

It begins.

...

I get up, I pray, I eat, I work. The rhythm comforts me, grounds my restlessness in monotony. Day and night become time, hours to divide, moments to control. The next eight hours is work. I am better for knowing it.

Work.

Feigned peace is broken. He is there.

A bag in hand, he empties his locker of goods and waste. He empties me of my memories, my hope, with it.

"Syed."

I knew he had left. She had told me as if it was entirely insignificant. I suppose it is now.

"It's true then..."

I have no grasp of why I expected things to be anyway the same once I returned. Maybe because I needed them to be, as if him sitting in the office, standing by the fridge, humming near the stove, would mean I am still who I was three weeks ago...that a tiny inconsequential part of us is left. That I would be falling, that I was changed, but that the smallest piece of a past, of him, would stay here, to protect me.

I know I shouldn't but I need him. Just give me a tiny part. Please.

...

I feel the gentle touch of his strength grace my head, soft finger tips ruffle through as if re-moulding me.

My eyes rise in confusion.

"You have bed hair", he answers, with a slow smile.

His gentle strength sweeps fallen strands from my eyes.

Consciousness tells me to blush and turn, yet the nerves that sense his every touch insist I stay.

...

The locker door shuts, the noise hurts me.

"It's for the best." I wonder if he is aware he is using the exact same line I offered him a lifetime ago. I wonder if he is as detached from belief in the words as I was.

I cannot stand the thought that I won't see him. As painful as it is to see him next to me without being able to touch him, talk to him as if he were still mine, unparalleled aching emerges at the thought of losing that pain. It is all I had left. Until this moment I was not aware of how much I was clinging to it. I needed it.

It is clear he does not feel the same.

"Okay", I say, because there is nothing else I can say. I bought us here and he can do whatever he wants. He can do whatever he doesn't want.

...

"Christian, are you coming to...?"

Toned muscles, shaped large and smooth confront me. He drags his work tee past his face, granting me seconds of undetected sight. I cannot move my gaze; it drinks him in, in new desperate thirst.

Shoulder blades arch, the ripple moves, in the reach. To hard biceps, the strength of the curve...through forearms, soft and firm. A sun kissed stomach plays, ab-drenched in the stretch. I am frozen in the heat. My breath is trapped as the vision ends; it has only just begun.

He turns his head, casual, and his eyes fix on me. Piercing green, I swear they see through me.

"Yeah, I'm done," he smiles. "Don't worry Syed, whatever your mother's told you about me, you'll see I do some work...sometimes," with a laugh that lights his face.

He brushes past and my skin tingles from his warmth. I blink hard. A passing moment.

I'm fine. I'll be fine.

...

I half stare at the door in which he walked out, hours before. That so much time has passed since he left is irrelevant. He left.

That is all there is.

"Babe!"

My mind is jarred, here, by my wife.

"So Christian's really quit? Have you been by yourself today?"

"Yeah...he's gone. I'm alone."

"Are you ready?"

The truth falls to my eyes and I watch what-could-have-been slip away, through the air. This is who I will be now. I retrieve my breath, I am prepared.

"Yeah," I tell myself. "Yeah, I'm ready."


	9. Chapter 9

_**Thank you for the lovely alerts and reviews. Always great to read thoughts...they keep me posting on FF. **_

_**Told in **__**Syed POV **_

I think I can feel him, if I close my eyes.

It is quiet now and if I let myself, I am almost back there. I can be next to him, I am for a second who I was when I had my skin warmed by his, when my breath waited, dutifully, for his next, when tired lids flittered and I would wake to him.

I cannot wake to him.

She moves within my shallow hold, stirring. It brings me back, almost.

Eyes blink, hard. I wake to sickness, to peace, to what I know will plague me for a life time: the knowledge that this is right, the feeling that this is wrong.

I think of my mind when I lay wrapped in his arms. I remember the guilt, the shame, the heavy terror that Allah could see my sin and was watching as I allowed myself to rest amongst it. I feel relief at its absence. I remember the warmth, the comfort, the overwhelming strength of his arms as he held me. I feel sick at its loss.

I miss him.

I look at her, she is smiling. I remind myself how to exist for another day, in this life. My arms must wrap hers, her scent must soothe me, it is us who must create happiness.

I can barely breathe.

...

"There's nothing in this house, nothing. Eight months pregnant and I am still the one they send..."

My legs walk to the kitchen; they find my mother, my wife. Desperate eyes run from them, they do daily. Love is evaded by guilty sight; the presence in one, the absence in the other. I cannot bear either.

"I'll do it now," I say, another small futile attempt to make peace, to make things normal.

My mother looks at me as if I speak in code, as if my simplest action is now wrapped in deceit and escape.

"No..." she dismisses. I feel my prison.

She led me here, I let her.

If I were honest, I would say it was needed. I am afraid to leave it.

"...I'll do it later Syed. It's only shopping."

...

"You don't have to do my shopping Sy."

"So what are you planning on doing? You can't live on cereal and vodka Christian."

"Speak for yourself." Under the gentle flecks of stubble, I see the pout.

"You think painkillers go well with hard liquor and no food?"

"I think everything goes well with hard liquor. Besides, I _have _food."

I watch proud legs turn for proof, for avoidance.

"Lentils, peanut butter...something that smells like cheese..." His head delved in the cupboard, we play the game once more.

"Like cheese?"

"...or something that at least was at one time cheese..."

"I'm going shopping," I walk away, having won.

"Sy..."

These walls are crushing him, I see it. He lets me.

"Listen, it's fine. Soon you'll be up to going out yourself, really soon. In the meantime, I'm doing it. No arguments."

"I like lentils and cheese..."

I roll my eyes to the door. "I'll be back..."

"Sy?"

"Yeah?", I turn.

"Thank you."

...

It's dark and I should be home but I avoid it like a coward. The night wants me and I let it have me.

I feel alone, always. I walk now because there are moments in which I need the isolation to be pure, to feel the loneliness when no one else is near. The hours when I am next to them, but without anyone, haunt me. When I was with him every nerve felt a part of him, his presence in my air was all it took.

My air is taken.

The first and last person I want to see is suddenly in front of me. I cannot bear to see him. I crave the sight of him.

"Christian..."

I am given it and it is not enough. It is never enough.

He stands for me, just as I remember. His body is perfection, draped in the shirt I admitted I liked once. He'll have forgotten.

"You look..." His eyes widen and I catch myself. "...going somewhere nice?"

"You know...nothing big." He looks guilty. I wonder what he possibly has to feel guilty about. I am taken with hurt, envy, sadness, betrayal, but he has no blame for any of it. He is the cause but only I am responsible.

"Well...I should get home," I tell myself. "Have a good night."

"Yeah...thanks. You too."

I watch him walk away from me.

There are no words anymore, I find myself with only one.

"Christian..." I call him back, in a whisper.

He does not hear, I cannot let him.

Like everything else, his night is no longer mine.

...

He opens the door, half undressed.

"Hi," he smiles, low.

"Hi," frozen by him, it is all I have.

His bare arm leans against the frame, and he stands, mesmerizing. "Was about to give up and go to sleep."

"I'm sorry, I couldn't get away. Tam's been up watching some late night stand-up thing. The baby's doing somersaults keeping mum awake. She's been pacing for the last hour. I'd hear her get a drink and think she was done and then I'd hear her in the bathroom..."

"Sy?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up," he scolds, with a laugh.

His hand takes mine, and he has me, in a heartbeat. It pulls me to him, dragged, effortlessly. I feel his heated skin upon my neck and there is nothing to the world but his touch.

...

My body slides down the shower, shaking. Our memories are used now, for this.

I sneak away from my sleeping wife and I think of him.

Breaths gasp, the dying tremor pulsates through empty legs, spinning in stillness. My arms wrap my knees, grasping bone in my mind's desperate attempt to keep hold of something. I feel myself on the edge of falling. Night tempts me back here, the quiet dark lets me succumb.

For the first time in nine weeks I have allowed myself to use him, and he doesn't even know. I betray her with the thought, I betray myself. The water runs down my calming chest, yet it can never leave me clean.

For a few fleeting minutes I am back with him. As the ecstasy subsides he slips from me and I am left alone, only shame and regret here with me. He is not there to press soothing lips upon my skin. I miss the smile of his kiss. Breath crushed by the loneliness of his absence and the presence of my guilt, I promise myself I will be stronger.


	10. Chapter 10

_**Set directly after the last chapter. Told in **__**Christian POV**___

"_Well...I should get home. Have a good night." _

His words run back and forth over me, their polite mundane tone slicing down at me. Now he goes one way, I go another. It is expected, it is regular.

It is unnatural.

My heart tells me I heard him call my name, my mind knows it is delusion. The gentle hover of his lip, the quiver of his chest, the silent plead in his dark brown gaze...my eyes remember how to hear him. They listen for him still.

Bone is drawn to him, legs beg to turn. I tell them to walk forwards. His eyes were not calling for me, I did not hear a thing.

I have not run to him, I am not at his door. Tired legs did move forwards. The hollow Tube drags me further still. Miles fall upon miles, yet memories chase me with cruel speed.

They need not hunt. I am draped in them. My chest is wrapped in cloth warmed with his affection; this is what I wear to move on.

...

Determined hands drag through each strand of hair, dishevelled, by him, for him.

A heated tongue probes my parted lips; its shy caress discovers courage in our taste. His kiss is firm, the soft strength takes my breath and I gasp with just the rub of his thumb on my lobe.

"I like that shirt," he breathes.

"The shirt?" I repeat, I have lost all sense.

"Mmmm..." he traces his finger tips over the silken cotton, "...it's very...you look...you look good."

It is tiny, insignificant, but the words let him seize my air for another moment. The smallest sign he gives me is everything.

...

Small is nothing, I need more. An anonymous club, intoxicating, liberating, deadening, is where I go to find it. The music seeps through my skin. The rhythm of my past pounds. Beats drown me and I hear him. Faces swamp me and I see him.

The hours pass and I shake him from me, I refuse to fall. Numbing, electrifying drink drives through me, courses my veins as if re-moulding me. I tell myself I have missed this. The club is filled, dripping with men I could have. I might do.

Conforming to the order, my eyes tell me I have seen something I want.

His hair is short, masculine. He is experienced in this, knows exactly what he's doing and would need no persuasion or scholarly interjection if I were to ask. He downs a vodka as I do, leaving me feeling less like an alcoholic. He is confident, sure, no wasted vulnerability in his eyes.

I want this.

...

Our lips merge and I stroke my hand through his hair, holding on as if he is mine, forever. He stops to nuzzle me with slightness and his tongue caresses the inside of my lower lip. He nibbles, motionless.

"You taste like whiskey," he laughs.

"You make me sound like a wino," I protest, with mock offence.

"No I think you need wine to be a wino..." he smiles, timid finger tips sketch the edge of my side. "...Even I can tell that's whisky."

"You're right, Sy. I'm practically tipsy." I bend with a whisper, low. "Feel free to take advantage of me."

He shifts his head, with a blush. He is beautiful. He needs me to lead, and I do. I take his hand and pull him gently towards me as I walk backwards to the bed. My hand moves to him, now on instinct. It runs through velvet hair and I watch as with a touch, I bring his darkened eyes to mine.

...

My heart watches as I let a strange arm touch mine.

"Can I buy you another?" I am asked, as I have been a thousand times.

It is the simplest of questions; it has never before been hard. Before him, things were never so hard.

I tell myself it can be easy, it is a comfort in the dark.

...

"It's fine when it's here in the dark though isn't it Syed?"

His broken eyes stare into mine and I know I hurt him, just as he hurts me.

"That's not fair," his head shakes the accusation from him.

"Except it kind of is. You're with me in here but you're not out there. And I get it, I do, and I put up with it, pretty patiently I think...but that doesn't mean I don't need some normal things sometimes. Going for a drink or something..."

"I just don't see why we should spend our limited time together in a room with other people, pretending."

"Then we don't go to the Vic. It's London, there's plenty of pubs out there Sy," and for a second I believe the simplicity of my words.

"I want to...you know I do. But the pretending...it'd still be there. And you'd hate it, I know you." He dips his sight from mine, ashamed of the truth I force him to pain me with. "You wouldn't be able to kiss me or just put your hand on my back. That can't change by getting on the Tube."

"It can though...if you wanted it to."

"It isn't as simple as that and you know it. Soho or Walford, it'd still be me. There are rules. This is isn't about what I _want_."

"Then we've got something in common Syed, 'cos this really isn't what I want."

...

I want him.

He is not here but he is everywhere. The memory of his scent feels more real than the figure that stands a breath from me. Brown lashes flit to the gold of his skin and his smile consumes me. I close my eyes to rid my sight of him.

The stranger's shape leans to my lips, a new smell and taste offer themselves to me. Yet the past tingles through my skin, it owns each cell, still. It promises me nothing but its claws digs in strong.

Thoughts of a future I will not have rush to me.

_Sunday papers sprawled past warm sheets and threaded legs, he leans, leisurely. My open arm wraps the smooth of his spine, finger tips stroke soft skin of his side. I am passed my page with a smile, and hours pass again without a care. _

_Rox tips back another glass and I muse over the ease in which she now beats me. His soft laugh fills the crowded room, sure eyes dance between friends. My hand grazes his thigh and I watch my love's happiness. _

_The key rattles through the door, his voice calls for me. My lips press his, his back slides to the door. I was waiting, as always. I tug his tie, soft throat flesh is freed and I slowly worship that which I have craved for each past second of the day. _

I blink the dream away. That life was never mine, I did not lose it. This is tomorrow now; it stands as a stranger at my feet.

And then I let him kiss me, because the one I want, I cannot have.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Told in **__**Syed POV**___

The quiet is loud to me and for another day, my weighted head sits amongst it. I rub my palm past tired lids, and breathe through pounding waves and ringing tolls. Eyes slam shut and I rush to shake it from me, with literal force. The heavy noise loiters still.

There can be no escape when it is yourself from which you run.

In perfect order, I am placed at the same kitchen table I sat before. I stroke my fingers across the smooth line of the wood, blindly drag my nail into the familiar dent of the groove. Everything is the same.

I cannot be convinced of it.

I need sleep, I tell myself. I will be well with more hours of peace. Except I close my eyes and it is he who waits for me...

"Syed?"

My head drags up and my mother looks down at me.

"Are you in a trance?"

"No. I was just..."

"Thinking again?" She says it as if she can control my thoughts. Perhaps she can. Perhaps I let her.

"No, I'm eating. I'm just sitting here eating."

"Barely." She looks suspiciously at the bowl in front of me, the abandoned flakes float in discard.

"I'll make you something else."

"It's fine, really. I'm fine. There's a little son who needs you more than me I'm sure..."

"Big or small, you're still my son Syed," and the words leave her as if they could be believed.

"Yeah..."

"So what do you want for breakfast?"

...

"Toast."

Morning ease and tender thought presents itself to me.

Grey bottoms join with bare chest, his smiling frame stands above the open bed.

The domesticity of the act should only scare, yet it grounds my body deeper into warm comfort and creased sheets.

"There's no chocolate spread is there?", I tease.

"You know it's polite to eat what the host provides when you come for breakfast."

"Technically I didn't come for breakfast. I came to see you before work and you were still in bed."

"And look what progress you've help me make," he smiles as he climbs back under our sheets, his arm finds the groove of my spine and rests, belonging, as it did before.

"I'm getting out in twenty five minutes," I tell myself.

His chest murmurs under me and I feel a laugh fall.

"Not twenty two?"

"No, twenty five is the exact balance between not being late for work and enough time to savour my toast and..."

"Honey." He proudly places a small plate on my lap, four triangles cut with care.

"I like honey," I admit with soft confusion.

"I know," he chews proudly. "I pay attention."

I feel familiar soft skin press heat onto mine and a parted mouth drag stubbled cheek. Sweet scented lips graze the tip of my own, tongue slips to taste sticky warmth.

"Mmm", I sigh. "Maybe forty-five..."

...

His soft hand rubs the nape of his neck, and he stands, in casual animation. A cautious distance from his gaze, I stand, staring.

Spring sun shines on him and I let needing eyes find comfort in the sight. His very beauty stuns me, as if dreams have failed to capture each blissful part. If night will provide mere imitation, I memorise every frame.

The smooth strength of warm arm, the green pierce of deep iris, the kept mess of thick strands... He is exactly how I left him, but different in little painful ways. I ask memory if those fragments of hair I see are altered, whether in my absence tufts have moved without a word. It is a life time since my fingers ran through them; I suppose they need not have been told of the change.

He talks at ease with friends as if all thoughts of us have passed. Time crawls on, it seems. I feel relief that for one of us the weeks have bought with them peace.

He laughs.

I find myself smiling at the curl of his lip, the familiar sound of the heat. That kind, humoured, giving laugh he sends freely. I smile with him.

My heart takes comfort in a sign that he is happy. It was for the best I let him go. There is a safety in the distance for both of us. I look, I cannot touch. Maybe we could just talk for a moment...

"Babe?"

The sound of my wife drags me back. I turn away from him, to her.

"What are you doing out here?" she asks, as if I even know myself.

"Nothing. I'm just...I'm on my way to work."

"Well no need anyway. Mum wants you home."

"What?" Bewildered, I turn with her signal across the street. With the shuffle of the curtain, my mother stares out; I feel her warning judgement on me as strongly as if she were here.

"I know. One minute she wants you at work, the next she sees you out here and she's insisting I bring you back to the house like your life depends on it. Maybe it's the hormones. I think she's lost her mind."

...

I am one breath of heated air from utter madness.

The wet red of his parted lips offers itself to me, damp lust tempting the last speck of weak control. With the tremble of my needing lip I know I am helpless, a single gasp of wayward ache and they will be his.

Too aware of its power, and willing to flaunt, I am teased with a brush of warm cheek. Flesh touches flesh and it burns skin like fire. The heavy heat of licentious want drifts over me and I know I am falling.

Panic of shy eyes dart to the open door and with no words he feels it. His ruling thumb traces my lower lip and I am dragged back to him.

"Christian...don't," I breathe. "_Please_."

The tip of his hand skims the line of my spine, nerves coaxed to hum through feeble cotton shield.

"We're at work," I beg.

My heart pulses through heaving chest; its owner draws it in.

"No one's here. It's just us," he soothes.

His dominating gaze is as powerful as touch and I am watched, in absorption. He says it.

"Kiss me."

Defenceless, desperate lips find themselves parting and his craving mouth takes my own.

It is not even a fight. I am his forever.

...

"I was on my way to work."

"Is that what you call it..." Her eyes keep from mine, her hands tidy with force. Clothes, toys, lives... It is all put in its place. "You're better off here with me."

"And why is that exactly?"

"A day off will do you good Papoo. Amira is fine covering."

"I can go to work. I'm not sick," I insist, though I may feel it.

"Sometimes we need those we love to protect us from harm...even if we are not willing to do so ourselves," she says in a hush. "Perhaps today would be best spent here...or at Mosque. With a rest, tomorrow will seem better."

"A rest? You're actually going to stand there and tell me I need to rest?" I hear my voice rising but I fail to care.

"Fine," she breaks. "We'll do it your way," and her eyes bore into mine. "You walk around in some sort of haze Syed. Enough is enough."

"Enough?", the word falls at her with helpless indignation.

I stare out with honest confusion, frail pretence has defined every waking breath. It seems it was not enough.

"I gave you time. I allowed you to..._wallow_. I humoured you in your belief that this was actually real enough to deserve it. To deserve your time, your tears...Well it stops."

"It stops?"

"_Now_." And I think she believes it can.

"You think any of this will ever stop? You think it is so damn easy that you can say so and it will just disappear? I have _tried_ to make it go away and I _keep_ trying. And it _won't._"

"Because you don't want it to."

"I don't...? You think I want this?! You think if there was anything, anything in the world I could do I wouldn't so I could _rid_ myself of it. All of it."

"I think you're afraid to Syed. I think you want to hold on to this...this _fantasy_ the two of you have concocted. I think if you let yourself move forward for one moment you would see that it was nothing, that it could pass as easily as it came."

"It wasn't a week long crush Ma. It was six months...and years before that of feeling it and ignoring it," I lose the strength of my words for a moment in the memory. "He didn't invent this; it was there...it was always there. He just made me see it."

"Damn right he made you. Big brown eyes and oh so forbidden. I can see it now, his greatest challenge yet. Once he had his eyes set on you...damn right he made you."

And the truth spills for us both to see.

"Made me because I _love_ him. Because loving him made it real...because no matter how hard I tried, and I _tried_, it wouldn't go away."

"You weren't married then. You have Amira now."

"Amira...she's my friend. He's..."

"Nothing. Amira is your wife and he is nothing."

I hear the door slam and the sound tells my mind I have run through it. Her final strike runs over me and the thickened weight of air suffocates. Lungs gasp and legs tread, I run from the words...be it their lie or their truth. I run. I flee to the only thing I will ever run to.

Him.


	12. Chapter 12

_**Thank you so much for past reviews and alerts. Hearing what you think means a lot so all comments really appreciated. **_

_**Set directly after the last chapter. Told in **__**Christian POV**_

"You can have that vomit to yourself darlin'. One AM, officially clocked off!"

I laugh with my best friend, she shuts the pub door, and another moment has passed in which I convince myself I am happy.

There are mornings now to which I wake where there is no ghost's smile waiting. Lids can open in the safety that he will not be there to keep me still. My hand does not reach out to skin for his touch, my nose does not drag sheets for his scent. Foolish heart, delusional head, they can face the truth.

He is gone.

I turn to make the walk home, fully aware that he will not be following. There will be no shy knock upon my door, no loving ardour within my bed... He will be home, he is with her. And that's okay, I tell myself.

Because it has to be.

My breath catches with an upward glance and for a second I suspect I am in madness. From the haven of my empty bed, the ghost has followed to the trees.

Within the darkness and the green, far from me, he sits alone.

With clasped hands and crouching head, weighted legs drape lonely bench. Sunk in stoop with fragile bones; a shadow too lifeless to be my dream.

He is real.

Lost in thoughts, my love has the world on him.

...

"And what are _you_ thinking?"

I place my lips, slow, on bare shoulder skin.

"Hmm?," warm dark eyes look up. Half wrapped in sheets, he rests, legs protectively curled against uncovered chest.

"Your face," I say. "You're thinking."

"I have a thinking face?"

"Yep. It crumples."

"Crumples?," he echoes.

"Yes." I graze my thumb between the dip of his brow. "Crumples."

With a gentle lean, I brush his lips with the tips of my own.

"Don't get me wrong. I like the crumple." Plump pink, they wait and I find them again. "Very much."

"I'm relieved."

"So...what were the thoughts?" I ask, in faith he would tell me if he could.

"Nothing," he covers with a smile. "They weren't anything."

Soft touch wraps the nape of my neck and wanting kiss takes my ready lips.

He whispers, "I was thinking it's cold in here and you should come back to bed."

...

"Sy?"

I say a word that has not left my mouth in a lifetime.

He looks up at me like he has missed hearing it, as if there is a part of him that is scared by it.

"Hi," he says quiet to the air.

I stumble forward into words. "What are you doing out here?"

"Nothing."

Rain tinged locks lay past sunken eyes and he sits, motionless. Huddled for fragile comfort, I wonder how he could ever look this small.

"Were you waiting for me?"

"No."

With timid caution, he lifts his gaze and doleful darkness finds its home.

"Yes. I don't know...maybe."

Within an instant I have found my place next to him and I sit, with knowledge there is nowhere else that I could be. Our legs brush in a passing touch and I tell my heart to hush.

"I've been walking, I just went walking and then I..." whisper turns to hush "...I was here."

Find me, find me always. Never let your body take you anywhere but where I am.

"It's gone one." I force myself into sense.

"I'm fine." He answers a question I did not ask. "I just needed some...space. I needed..."

"You can talk to me."

...

"You did _not_ just say that."

"What?", angelically, he grins.

"Don't do those big brown eyes at me. You are not that innocent Syed Masood."

Leg pinning limb, I climb upon his waiting frame.

"I'm entirely innocent. I was just laying here minding my own business..."

"When you thought you'd say the worst thing you could possibly say to me?" My hands pin his forearms in play.

"I said you looked good!"

"And?" I press, the tickle of my finger tips interrogates defenceless skin.

"That was it! I definitely stopped speaking then. You're imagining things again."

"Even better..." I bend to flickering eyes. "...I'm a senile pensioner now am I?"

"Okay Okay!", a laugh reverberates through playful ribs. "I said you looked good..." and he gives me that smile he knows will forgive him anything "..._for your age_."

"That's it! You are _so_ getting it now."

Punishment ready and willing to serve, my lips on his throat is my brutal rebuke.

...

"How? How can I talk to you Christian?" he asks me as if I have answers to give, as if he craves them if I did.

"You think things..." I tell him all that I have "...and then instead of bottling them up, you say them out loud. Before you know it, you're talking," and I smile despite myself.

"Everything's so easy isn't it?"

"No. No it's really not." I shake my gaze to my sitting feet. "But I know you, and no matter how much you think you should keep everything in that head, it won't make anything better. It never did."

"Things were different then..." his words wander with his eyes and I wonder if he is picturing us then like I know I am.

"Yeah they were." I shake myself back. "I still...care. You can talk to me...anytime."

"Not about this I can't."

"_About anything_."

"I'm married," he tells me in lifeless flat, as if it needs reminding.

"Yeah..." the old truth stops me for a moment.

"But you're still you," I promise in a whisper. As if unaware how time has passed, fingers on instinct reach to mend the strand laced cracks. A familiar listless lock sits past tired eyes and I stroke nervous fringe back into ordered place. "And I'm still me."

In part to prove my words with our touch, in part to give myself a moment more, my hand finds his cheek and I soothe stubbled skin with a gentle thumb.

His bottom lip dips, his mouth parts and for a second I think I have him.

"I...have to go," he leaps up as if attacked. "You were right, it's late."

I see that look in his eyes and the guilt crushes me as the lie crushes him. In trying to save myself, in blinding my sight from his, I failed to watch over, I failed in saving him.

"Syed..."

"They'll be wondering where I am."

He scrambles away, I watch him go, and the last moment has passed in which I convince myself he is happy.


	13. Chapter 13

_**Thank you for all alerts and comments. Reviews are really appreciated. **_

_**Set directly after the previous chapter and **__**told in Christian POV**__**, having returned home. **_

I thought he had gone.

I crouch here where he once was and my mind mocks my heart for its delusion. As if he could ever go from me. As if there could be a time when the realms of possibility would meet with the removal of him from me. As if I would ever want it if it could.

If he were to leave I have no grasp of what would be left of me.

His body walked from mine, treaded through the door in which my back now slides, and out to them, in surrender. I know it happened. I did not dream it.

It means nothing now.

If away from me he breaks, if without my touch he aches, then that he is gone was the real lie.

He never left.

...

My teeth dent my lower lip to hide a laugh filled smile, and I watch his tumbled scurry from the view of the bed: my favourite new pastime.

Bare skin half covered in linen shield, hidden feet shuffle under crimson sheet. No walk from a bed to a fridge has ever been as sweet.

With a make shift dance of scuttle and trip, a train of bed clothes follows him in his mission led path.

One hand clinged to waist to hold wayward sheet, one grabbed on handle to open the fridge; watching his muddled determined wrestle can only leave my cheeks with a grin.

"Are you having some difficulty?" I whisper to his strand laced ear; my body pressing his to show I am there. The half let shiver and muscles tensing under skin tells me every last cell is alive and aware.

"No..." and I know exactly the face he is pulling with no need for sight. "...I'm fine thank you," he says, losing the battle with disobedient cloth

In passion and heat he gives himself freely, lays his self bare for me, in skin and in soul. Open, he offered all to me minutes before, and I took it completely. Moments later he is timid, within himself, and I let him be. He is shy inside, holds a delicate blush of private reserve, and I would do all things to protect it.

I will let him be him with me, in every form that takes.

"Here," I murmur low, as I move both hands to grab falling sheet, and wrap it in modest gather at the dip of his back.

His chest takes a heightened breath in and gentle pink flush tiptoes onto that beautiful neck.

"Thank you," he says.

...

My eyes are broken now I have seen his fate, they see him sad and they refuse to see truth at all. Wet irises look up from the floor in which I sit and need no push to tell my heart he is here/the lie/the familiar comfort of the lie.

He is sprawled out within my bed, gorgeous bones wrapped in crumpled sheets, and a sleep laced moan falls from his parting lips. That little murmur that slides from dreamy bliss and makes my skin hum when it traces/tracing my neck. He is stretching slow with that half complaint frown, and rubbing a soft palm over drowsy brows. Dark strands flop in adorable boyish mess, and he is smiling in that way that is saved only for me.

He is not here because I need it, although I will not pretend I do not.

Out in the world he looked at me, hopeless and small, and I know not a thing has changed. He is mine, as he ever was, because he needs me, as he ever did.

...

My arms wrap his delicate waist, hands cup the base of his spine, and we stand, in perfect stillness. His nestled head in the crux of my chest and warm shallow breath on the tip of my skin, I cannot help but think it.

He is mine.

With the click of the door, our little world is sealed in tight. There is another, noisy and rough, it sits out there waiting, we are both too aware.

Yet with the radio sounds and our skin pressed in warmth, we sense nothing but each other. Doubt and tomorrow and the sadness they bring gain no entry. I will not bring them here. He does not need that from me and though questions plague every hour, I do not desire to.

If he needs to be held, then I will hold him. If he needs to forget, then I will let him. If he needs to be calm, then I will be still.

Today, with the joining caress of melody and my touch, we are still.

I feel his body move within my protecting grasp. He begins to sway, very slow. I would barely know it but with the curl of his lip on my collar bone flesh and the flicker of his pulse beating fast onto mine, my heart picks up every change. Gently, he sways.

"How's such a baby a fan of Ben E. King?"

The opening beats thud slow through the room and my fingers trace his skin in time with the tune.

"I like...I like the film it's from," he says. "It's my favourite."

"Ah 80s then. That sounds right," I smile. "It's a sad one. You're a softy really aren't you?"

"Me?", he lifts his head.

"Don't worry, I won't tell a soul," I promise in a hush.

"Funny," he faux frowns and rests back where he began. "I don't think it's that soft, kind of nice..."

My hands guide his hips, my thighs brush his side and I move us slow to the beat with barely a change.

He drifts with a whisper "...people change, like you weren't who you were to begin with, or who they thought you were...things always change, but none of that matters...they love you anyway..." and he catches himself "...or something like that..." he murmurs. "...anyway, it's a good film."

"Sounds it," I say, with a kiss to dark thick locks.

The melody runs, the words fill the air, and with our bodies in time, in this moment I know he is mine.

...

At times I have found myself thinking I want him to be happy. I have told myself that there is part of me that is selfless enough. I did not need to tell a single part of me that I love him enough.

But he is not.

Tonight, with barely a word, he screamed it out.

"_They'll be wondering where I am." _

The pain laced duty rings through my ears and aches my eyes.

They do not know who he is and they do not care. If this is how they treat his beauty then they do not deserve to set their gaze upon it. There can be no point in the abandoning if it only serves to make him weak.

If that is what they choose to do with him then I choose to take him back.


	14. Chapter 14

_**This chapter is **__**told in Syed POV**__**. Set the morning after we saw Syed troubled on the bench and Christian made a decision. **_

My empty fingers wrap the familiar cold handle of the door and I yank my body through the waiting space, physically jolt my feeble mind back to daily labour, back to sanity.

_You take yourself to him and you stand outside his door. What was it you were expecting when your thumb pressed the buzzer and you held your breath to hear him there. What did you think, he'd be sitting waiting, placed exactly where you had left him months before. And what if he were, what you would have possibly done with him. _

The smallest breath of life ago I let myself fall back there.

_You knew what you were doing, you didn't sit because your legs were drained and you needed to rest your bones. You needed him. It is always him. Part of you did not know what you would do if he did not walk through the noise and out the door; part of you did not know what you would do if he did. _

The mad hours are over, I shake myself. Through the snap of the door, I lose him, I re-gain myself. The man I need to be is here when he is not.

Calmly, beautifully, he stands there.

"Hey," he says with his gentle smile. It traps the life in my gasping lungs.

"Hi," I hear myself speak. "What are you doing here?"

His perfection is here to mock me, it can only be.

"Jane asked me to cover." As if to soothe my nerves, he shows me his own; eyes dart down and hands rub blue cloth. "Plus, you know, I miss the apron."

"Of course," I gain breath with a laugh. No one will ever make my heart beat faster; no one will ever put me more at ease.

"About the other night...," he starts.

"It was nothing," I stop him.

"Yeah," he says, though I am too aware he has yet again seen through the words I give him. In a life of make believe it is he who sees through it all, who without a thought, sees through me.

"It's just...", he speaks quiet. "...if it was something...you could tell me." In a life dedicated to delusion, it comes to nothing with just one look. His eyes tell me I am pretending, and I watch as my fake world, meticulous in its construction, crumbles in his sight.

"Yeah well...there's nothing to tell," the script is followed regardless.

"But if there was...", and with insistent moves closer, he takes the safety of our distance from me. "...you could." I feel his piercing eyes warm me and he tempts me with his care. "I meant what I said. You can talk to me Sy."

I look back at him and I am fully aware I stand so weak, one tug of my strings and I would be crying at his feet. One word of comfort, the slightest touch, I warn myself of just how little it would take for him to drag me from this place.

"What is this then? Comfort?"

"Syed..."

"Well thank you very much but I've got no use for it. I never needed your comfort before Christian and I don't need it now."

...

I love the gentle sound, a little hum, lazy and low and caught on a breath, the hum of him.

It is sound my mind would consume through every hour if I were to let it...if this were life. If life was laying in hushed darkness and used sheets and the inescapable luxury of his warmth, I would float away in a willing trance.

I tilt my head over the mount of strong shoulder bone to see the red tinge of minutes we have left. It is early still, no alarm will call for a hand full of hours but that a timer exists is cruelty enough. The silent pound of the second hand tick drags my head to where I must return, that I must return at all.

I am back with him with his smallest stretch, his head delving into pillow and pressed lips freeing a murmured purr.

The gentle shut of his sleeping lids, the chest rise and fall of shallow breath, he is peace, he is calm, and I know it is mine to share.

I rest my head into the nuck of moulding chest and return myself to fill the space his body tells mine it was made to make. Nose nuzzling the velvet heat of his skin, I ground myself in the calming murmur of his heart, still racing heavy head with the soothing drum of its familiar beat.

Through the senses of shuffling dreams his arms stretch to bind waiting waist, large finger tips spread to protect fragile back and I am wrapped in his offering of tender strength.

...

"How about we just call it conversation then, you know, talking, like people do."

"Except there's nothing to talk about."

"Nothing, huh?" he asks in that way, like he knows the answer.

"Well we could try the weather, the price of curry, but other than that no, not a thing."

"Except it wasn't the forecast or Masala Queen's new menu that was on your mind last night was it?" His eye lids lower in comfort, along with his quietening voice. "Sitting on a bench outside a pub at 1am, that isn't you Syed."

I force myself to feel anger; because he dares say that he knows me, because he thinks that I need him, because he feels that I am his...because he is right.

"You don't know a thing about me."

"Really?" He sweeps the shrinking distance from us. "I think I know you pretty well."

I dip my confessing eyes to avoid his sight; the fix will only make me weak.

"I know when you need help, the last thing you'll ever do is let yourself take it. I know when you're scared, you shut me out. I know whenever you needed me..."

"Christian..."

"...I'd be there."

And for a second I let myself feel just how much I need him.

"I'm married," I tell myself, as if saying the words enough will shock my mind into sense.

"It doesn't mean you can't talk to me. I'm still your friend Syed."

I need him too much to let him near.

"Except we're not friends Christian," I say, because I can't be. "We never were."

...

"Here. Drink this."

I place the little comfort I can give to him into fragile open hands, and wrap myself in the empty space his curled body sits without.

"Why do I think this isn't whiskey?" his eyebrow raises with a sulk.

"Coco," I instruct, the grey laced lines under sunken blue bled eyes taking my pausing sight. "It'll help you sleep."

"I'd prefer whiskey."

"Well you're under supervision so today we're trying good old fashioned warm milk."

"Are we in the Walton's?"

My smile breaks out and I hear myself laugh. That laugh, the sound, the ease that only he can build. I beam as I see his grin and feel his humoured ease join my own.

With the cruelty of nothingness, a sharp sound rips the air. Harmless mundane noise shatters his smile and I watch him flinch.

"It's okay," I soothe, with the folding of fingers into his hand. "It was just a car horn," I stroke my thumb calmly on the flesh of his wrist. "You're okay."

"No, no I'm really not." He drags a hand over a shaking head. "This is just pathetic. I'm sorry."

"Don't even think that. It isn't and you don't need to be. Ever." He looks back at me as if I gave him what he needs. "Let's watch something," I say, reaching for the papered guide. "I fancy a film."

"It's been hours already. You should get back."

"I'm comfy here thanks," I say, squashing down into comfort piled cushions.

"They'll be wondering where you are," he persists.

"That doesn't matter."

...

"We weren't friends?" he echoes with confidence, deathly low.

I stand silent, not able to bring myself to tell either of us another lie.

Knowing I am falling, his body moves, no space left between our flesh.

"I don't suppose we were lovers either."

Fire lit pin pricks flicker crimson heat across my cheeks. My chest struggles for its next breath, consumed by lustful memory laced blush.

Bashful eyes try to dip but his determined stare holds me in place.

"Did you share my bed for six months?" The words ghosts from his tempting lips. "Just so I'm clear on what was real."


	15. Chapter 15

**This chapter is a direct continuation of the last. Comments are lovely, thank you! **

"Did you share my bed for six months?" The words ghosts from his tempting lips. "Just so I'm clear on what was real."

The syllables are laced with time sharpened memories, and one by one, they strive to steal my breath from me.

"Marriage, family...that's what _real_," I say, because despite their newly hollow, empty edge, they are.

"It felt pretty real to me," he says, as if he knows, despite their long established power, they make _this_, him, no less so.

There is so much he cannot understand but he knows everything.

He knows that with the simple hover of his red damp lips, mine will tremble. He cannot comprehend that he can cause my needing heart to drum but no quickened pulse, no heightened beat will place me back at peace.

He tries to make me braver but he only makes me more afraid.

"It felt _real_," he breathes. "And I know it did to you too."

...

Trapped by cold oak and heated flesh, I am held tight.

Pressed hard against his slammed-shut door, the rapid breath of my slight needing chest is locked by the dominant weight of his.

Time has stopped, all sense and thought but those tuned to his has fled to nothingness. Once again, there is only him and I.

Investigatory, leisurely, knowingly, soft tipped fingers tease up the line of my trembling skin.

Scrunched up and dragged, the tight green tee I had worn for the pleasure of him reveals my flesh to him; his open mouth finds that dip in my lower rib and on the sound of a vibrating moan I shyly smile that I have pleased him so.

In a heartbeat my body has been moved, his large hand pinning both arms above my head with sinful ease.

"I missed you," he tells me in a warm breath to my neck.

A barely kiss, a teasing flesh...the heady aroma, its familiar danger, drifting through my air is all it takes.

He washes over me.

The scent of dark heat and bathed skin, it means sweet caress and fervent sex. It calls to dormant cells, lifeless pulse, flat fibred hairs. They are called to life, for the countless time, by him.

I take his scent greedily.

The firm soft edge of his thumb strokes my out turned wrist and I bite away the gasp that threatens to fall out from my lips.

I don't know why I try to hide from him, to contain pleasured sounds or signs of wanting. In that confident smile, in the experience of his years, in the trust I show through all that I give of myself, he knows I am weak for him. We both know it.

He could do anything to me he wanted.

It is not as simple as his superior strength. It is that I have no strength to resist. I have no strength to want to.

In these moments, where crazed heat drowns cold duty, I allow myself to feel it: I will only ever want him.

...

"_It felt real." _The words echo through me.

Without a touch he drags me back to the darkest and most blissful feelings of my existence.

His heavy lips a breath from mine, I rush back to us. He is caressing aching skin in sullied sheets, he is pressing open mouth to neck pinned to wall, he is stroking soaked hair from wet brow in steamed shower. With his mesmeric stare at my lips, he tells me what I crave.

It is only the beginning.

Desire dazes my fragile strength but it is not what threatens it with dissolve. Ecstasy does not start or end with tensed muscle and wanton cries, it runs through every moment by his side. It is every kiss, every word, every quiet. It is him.

There is more to life than ecstasy, I shake myself. There is them. There is duty to grieving mothers and needing wives, there is respect to elders and cultured rules, there is committed observance to The Ever Watching God.

I find my strength, though not myself, in their sight...and I say it.

"That isn't who I am now."

"You're exactly who you were before Syed, you know you are."

And it is being that that keeps me from him.

I cannot hope he ever understood that, or when the years have passed, he ever will. I tell him the words he needs to hear now, the words that will help him understand. I am a son, I am a brother, I am a Muslim. I am a man that wants him so completely but cannot have him.

"I'm a husband now..." More than married, I tell us both...someone else's. The words break from me. "I'm hers."

He retreats like I have injured him with reality. It is a lie but it results in the same truth.

I cannot be with him.

"Yeah..." he pauses on a breath "...doesn't seem quite real does it?"

...

"This film doesn't make any sense you know..." I muse to him, our bodies merged as one in the scrunch of soft sofa cushion.

"...I thought that guy was his brother..."

I can feel the weight of his resting head, buried in the protective nuck of my neck and collar bone dip. Absent knowledge of where he stops and I begin, in this moment, it seems the most natural of things.

"...but now they don't seem to know each other."

My confused eyes focus on the flashing screen, but that little space of my mind, solely dedicated to his presence, is, as always, taken by him.

I remember no time when it has not been. Weeks before his lips first touched mine, before I found the strength to let him see me, a part of my core was tuned for him. If he stood in the room, if he was near, my tingling nerves would be acute, they would listen for his name.

I like to know he is there. As these healing weeks have past, I love that he knows that, now, I am.

"Or does he just _look_ like his brother?"

The thought in my mind fixed for him, prickles to the silence.

"Christian?" I say, with a switch of my head.

His sunken face is nestled into the checks of my pillow-turned shirt, the tufts of his make shift bed hair fluffed with involuntary care. Eye lids flicker in soothed peace, the little purr of air all that breaks the hush.

He sleeps.

I glance at the slightly sipped coco that rests neglected on the table side. My body was his comfort, I smile to myself. In these moments, I smile, because I want that to be who I am.

...

"Things are just different now. I have to...I want to be that."

"Yeah..." he drifts, my breath catching at the pain in his fragile eyes. I have seen that look too many times before, in him, in myself.

Wounded green tells me it is time. I am only hurting him.

"Maybe it would be best if we just...if we kept our distance. I mean, I know I was the one that came to you last night and I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done..."

"Don't ever be sorry for that," he says with such open honestly; it comes so naturally to him.

"It wasn't fair though. From now on I'll just...stay away." The promise aches as I make it. The passing glances in the street where no words have passed have been what I have clung to. The stolen glances where he would not even know I was watching...I don't know if I am brave enough to let them go.

"I don't want that."

The words rush from him in such beautiful comfort. It shouldn't feel so beautiful.

"We're going to see each other Syed, living on the same Square...it's not like we can avoid it..." His eyes draw up to mine. "And why would I want to." He gives a gentle smile. "It's you."

I hear myself murmur what my heart screams. "I don't want to either."

The words hover in the air and neither of us dare to speak, we cling to the closest words we can safely say now.

I close my eyes on a blink and wish myself to months ago, when his soft hand would touch my cheek and strands of hair would be soothed in place.

In this moment, when time stands still, it is just us in the world and memories wash over me. Little stolen moments, no witnesses, no song, but all consuming. They were hidden, snatched, they were meant to be wrong, but they were...everything.

They were the most I have ever had or I sometimes know, ever will.

My fleeting lids prise open and as brown dream connect to green, I ask myself if he feels the same.

Through the drift of the gentle natural hush, my heart aches with its need to have my skin stroke the beauty of his face.

"Well we should get to work," he says, as if he can hear me, as if protecting me.

"Yeah..." I concede.

In these moments, when all life but this is loss and smother, with soft graze of tongue and worship of lips, his yearned protection would be his kiss.


	16. Chapter 16

_**Told in **__**Syed POV**__**.**_ **Always lovely to hear what you think so reviews are gorgeous, thanks. **

I stumble through the stalls, attempt to gain breath from the morning air, and complete the routine that has marked the past three weeks and two days. Fajr, the first of five whispered pleas that continue to leave my lips; unanswered, it leads to breakfast, which once consumed sees an early escape past the familiar guard of wooded gate. And then I walk, through the gardens or the streets, I walk for hours.

I have seen him at times, since that day when he was one kiss from having me fall. We are friends now it seems; not best friends, not loves, but the friends that smile in the street, who utter polite words, that pass as if it is the most normal of things.

"Wooah!"

My frame collides with looming hard body, distracted in its movement again. On a panicked glance up my heart sees whose the body is: the only one I will ever be drawn to.

"Christian..."

I scan around us, in a second aware that I have walked to where he works, as if I think of him and I am where he may be.

"Jesus Sy, you crashed right into me," he says, flaying his hands to the disinfectant type stench that drapes the pavement and his chest.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going...and now...your top, it's..."

I find myself wiping at his slightly damp tee, my hands stroking the cloth as if they can absorb. I can feel the taut muscles lying under there, layered firm heat; my fingers saunter slowing as if it's still mine to explore.

With a shallow speeded rise and fall, his breathing mirrors my own and my enthralled palms cling to the contraction of his chest.

His eyes move from my stationary hands and fix on me, before I stumble out shyly "...I think it's ok now."

"I'm ok to return to work then?" he smiles, in that knowing way.

I laugh, with a blush, my unruly hands fiddling at my sides. "Yeah I think you'll survive." My eyes dash, desperate for another focus. "They keep early hours at the Vic then?" I say, with relieved pride at some form of success.

"Yeah I was dragged out by Her Majesty to clear up last night's mess. Beer, sick and pork scratchings, it's all very glamorous."

"But you like it, I mean, working here?"

"Yeah, it's great. I get Rox as an organ grinder instead of your mother, get to go home smellin' of beer instead of onion...and the cutest boys, well..." one side of his lip curls and quietly, he says "...they practically bump into me."

"The flirting barman huh?" I distract, though I know that praise will stay with me through all the day.

"You know me."

His words leave me with a slight flush, I can feel the pink crush on my cheeks. "Well talking of work, that's where I was aiming for. I should go. Really sorry about the..."

"It's fine," he assures as his eyes spark with light. "Remember to look where you're going, you'll injure yourself."

"I'll try," I smile, as I begin to drag myself away, my legs attempting to remember their destination. "I'll be fine in an hour. Takes me forever to get my bearings when I've just woken up."

He says quietly and low, "I remember."

...

I am delved in the untainted luxury of his sheets.

The dark satin hums through my skin, its smooth ardent caress an extension of him. No piece of body or fragment of mind has a single desire to leave.

The coolness of his sheets envelope my bones, and I scrunch downwards into my cushioned cocoon. Half in dream I hear my lips release a little moan, the early sunlight dancing down my face, tingling flickering lashes.

I feel his grazing thumb stroke the stubble of my cheek, fighting the grumble of my frown that emerges as I wake.

The very edge of his nose drags down from my lobe and his lips press soft heat on my throat.

"Wake up gorgeous," he sighs onto my skin.

...

I stir the contents of another order, in a knowing haze. There is only his face in my mind; when I think of his smile there is nothing else.

"You're here."

My mother is standing at my side, sudden and it scares me. Her walk through the door was silent; I cannot know how when her presence has never been more loud.

"Where else would I be?" I question.

I watch a thought pass over her eyes, one that is quickly pushed away as they refuse to ponder it.

"I think it would be very nice for you to take Amira out tonight."

"Why? What's happening?"

"Nothing is happening, is a special occasion really needed? Candles, nice food, romantic music...these things are very important to a marriage Syed. Romance, affection, courtship...two people so much in love, it's an entirely natural thing." My eyes close as I hear the clarification. "_A man and his wife_."

"Well I can't tonight, I'm not really going to be very good company," I say, in honesty, turning back to control the heating pressure of the stove.

"When exactly was the last time you were good company Syed?"

The curt insinuation drags my eyes up to hers, in defence. I balk at the tone, the only one I have heard since she learnt who I was: stern and judging. I can't dispute the words; the last hour I was of use, I cannot remember myself.

"I know you're tired Papoo and things have been...difficult," she trivialises, her voice softening. "Spending time with your wife, well, it can only make things easier."

"Just not tonight," I say, barely able to conform to the usual display, terrified of the expectations of something more. "...another time."

"It would be a shame to disappoint her Syed, she was so pleased when I mentioned your idea."

"My idea?" I scoff at her continual interference, but can't avoid the image of the smile of my wife in replacement of the misery I must be putting there.

"I just left her, already trying on dresses...not that I approve of the pride or vanity of course but it is very important for a wife to be attractive for her husband, to..._encourage his interest_."

"Mum..."

"Your father is up early with his round, Kamil takes all my energy...when you get home the whole house will be asleep, nothing can wake us," she spells out, as if there is a subtlety to her words. "You enjoy yourselves."

I feel myself stare out at her, silence falling when there are just no words. My love for her is no less than it was before, but her knowledge of me is only diminishing. She does not see me at all.

"I'm proud you're being a good husband Syed. Allah is proud as well, I feel it. I know that you won't let us down again." The ache in my gut tightens at the thought. "A betrayal like that, that level of shame...I know my son would not do such a thing again. Not to his family."

...

"_You're shameless_."

"What?" his grin rings with a laugh.

Resting his body over mine, his face lights up above me with a smile; that smile that says fake innocence and pure mischief.

"Not only asking me to do it but asking when I'm..._distracted_."

He smiles widely, as if surprised by his effect, as if with the slightest drag of his lips, I would not be on my knees.

I am still glowing, the fading hum preserved by the press of his firm chest, the touch of his warm skin on mine. He dances his fingers through my crumpled hair and down my bare chest, reminding my traitorous body of what it was given in the hour before.

"You'll be up early anyway," he says, with a new found interest in my prayer schedule. "...you love 7am you know you do. Say 'hello Mr. Delivery man, thank you,'" the words are moulded into my lips with his, "...and you're done."

Attempting to re-gain some semblance of strength, I say with impressive almost-firmness, "Why can't you do it?"

"Cos I don't want to."

An uncontrollable laugh escapes me and I shake my head, unable to stop the massive grin stretched on my face.

"Come on..._please_?" he pleads, his thumb tracing my stomach. "I'll make it worth your while", he sings.

"Bribery?" I raise an eyebrow in mock disapproval.

"Call it a reward," he winks.

"What, I get presents?" I play. "Well I like clothes and I like CDs..."

"I think I can do better than that..." he devilishly hums, biting his lower lip, determinedly.

His finger tips slide possessively down my skin, before giving a teasing tug at my boxer rim. I toss my head back into the familiar depth of his pillow and shake it on a gasp: I'll be working early tomorrow.

...

I find myself in the sanctuary of an empty living room, the peaceful quiet that hangs the air replacing the awkward silence that hung the restaurant hours earlier. The other couple's were not like us. I have spent my life wanting to be just like them and, in the way I looked at her, the sparse words that we forced, we were nothing like them.

It wasn't like that with him.

My stomach would knot in teenage nerves when I was next to him, but words came so easy and even more, when they did not come, the quiet was just as loving.

I am aware to some she is beautiful, and I say it, because she deserves to hear it. Like all things now though, it is a duty, one I must remind myself to fulfil, one that is expected but coolly hollow. The curve of her shape in the dress she wore means nothing to me. The dress means nothing; the dress she thought over for hours, and should have distracted my body and mind through every course, and stay in my head long after, means nothing.

I remember the shirt he wore when we first kissed, white and crisp. I can picture the coat he wore in the winter, and feel it's lining where my fingers played. I can smell the loose grey tee he was in the second time I knocked on his door at midnight because I missed him.

"Are you sitting in the dark for a reason?"

The light comes on and I jump out of myself, out of us.

"Tam! You scared the...what are you doing up?"

"Getting a glass of water, why?" He rubs his hand down his face and scrunches his sleep laced nose. "Why are you up?"

"I err..."

"The beautiful woman waiting for you putting you off going to bed?"

I give a half smile, half unable to pretend there is anything funny about those words.

"What are you doing down here really?"

"Nothing, I was just..."

The words fade for me; I have no idea what I was doing, or what I've been doing for most of my life. If I let myself feel it, I know what task had taken my mind. I was beginning to realise that this can't go on, that no matter what they want, or how it will hurt…I can't live like this.

"You ok Syed?" I feel my little brother's questioning gaze as the answers scream out from me. "Do you need something?"


	17. Chapter 17

_**Told in **__**Christian POV**__** and is set a day or so after the last part. **_

_**As always, comments are gorgeous thank you. **_

The blush in his eyes when he stroked my dampened top was the same as the early months when I would have his touch: shy and needing, like there was nothing else in the world as mesmerizing as my skin.

Unable to stop myself as I walk, I go from one memory to the next, searching each recent exchange for a sign of what it is he feels.

I shake my head; I am no longer such a fool as to think his heart has the control. It is his mind that takes him from me, I know his heart has never left. It is his mind that fights, so tangled by them, there is no free thought let to pass.

I've taken myself to see Jane, needing the sight of someone who knows that there was a time when he was mine. As if hearing that voice say his name will provide me with some comfort, as if looking in eyes that know the truth will mean that it was real.

With the sound of her in the kitchen, I put on a smile and with a push, walk through the pulled to door.

...

My foot kicks out to the side, and with the doors' bang our lust is freed to do as we crave.

Slammed against the wall, his body thrusts to mine. Willingly he submits to the press of my chest, the hold of my hands on his waist and the back of his neck.

"_Fuck_, I've been thinking about this all morning," I breathe.

There is air, our lips rush to part, the push of tongue dragging out our bliss laden taste. My fingers stroke through the sensual beauty of waved hair, as I feel his search in play, scrunching the cloth of my tee.

On a gasp I break our kiss, permitting him to yank blue barrier from my skin. I watch as those perfect eyes widen with satisfaction, darken with wanting.

Dampened lips trail the sweet spot of his throat, possessed with need for his taste and to hear the sound of his need in return.

"We have twenty minutes," he pants, lust dripping on the breath.

My hand drags his belt on a swish, the other sliding the metal trap of his zip.

"We need longer lunch breaks."

...

"I was just doing a sandwich, want some lunch?"

"Nah it's ok babe thanks, I'm not that hungry."

She looks at me as if after thirty seconds I have given it all away.

"You're thinking about him aren't you?"

"You got that from turning down a sandwich? Maybe I don't like Ian's choice of economy saver bread, ever thought about that?"

"You need to get out there Christian," she says matter of factly, pouring tea, like her statement is simple.

"I go out, go out all the time."

"Yeah but are you meeting anyone? Turning up, getting drunk alone and ignoring any one that comes near, that isn't healthy Christian."

I lean back against the work top, sighing at the speed in which my hopes for sisterly support had vanished. I know she says it because she cares, thinking I would have moved on by now, or that with her nudges, I'll find the sense to soon. She does not understand that nothing exists that I could move on to. There is no going back to one-night stands and there is no lure in forever if it is not with him.

"The woman that was ecstatic at me finding a relationship now wants to send me back trailing the clubs?" I say, in a vague attempt to help her see.

"But that's just it Christian, you _had_ a relationship." She pauses, finding a gentle tone to give me the news. "Then he married someone else."

"I know Jane,I didn't bump my head and forget," I sigh. "It's not the usual break-up though is it? He didn't leave because he didn't love me, he didn't leave because he's happier with her."

"No, he left because he's in a family that won't accept your relationship, because he's following a religion that tells him he isn't allowed to be with you." She passes me a cup of tea as if consolation. "You need to move on from this. You can't beat the might of his mother, Christian, and you certainly can't beat his God."

...

I flick the kettle on, hearing the sound of my blissful hum and being quite willing to revel in it.

"You should be on the stage with a voice like that."

I spin around to see him standing there; my towel draped around his waist, sparse water beads dripping down the matted dip of his chest, and smiling in that way I could watch forever.

"Well thank you very much," I grin, my eyes fixed to flickering brown, as my body stalks its way back to his.

"My pleasure," he says on a gentle laugh, my thumb reaching to graze the curve of his lip.

I run both hands through his wetness tinged hair, purposely playing with damp tufts as I see him watch.

"I do tea too. There is no end to my talents," I smirk on a kiss. "You get them all, you lucky thing."

"It's the humility with it, that's what's so rare. As much as I'd love to see another of your many talents, I'm going to have to pass," he smiles, moving away in search of his jeans.

"Hey I do humble," I say, wrapping him by the waist and pulling him back. "Stay and I'll show you how amazing I am at it."

He laughs freely, trapped in my embrace.

"I would, I just...I'm meeting Tam and dad to go to mosque."

I pause for a second, the reference to the other part of him taking my thoughts. He never really mentions it, his faith; it isn't ignored but we don't explore. I feel sometimes I should ask, but with sense, I cannot think how that exchange of nervous words would go anything close to well.

"Yeah, yeah of course," I say with a smile, trying to hide from my face a sign that I have failed to be at total ease with any part of him. "Of course you should go."

...

I know victory over his family or faith is not what I desire. I walk home and with Jane's words, I know it more than I could before. On hearing them they did not inspire angered agreeing or righteous action, only sadness, that he needs them all but feels, in loving me, he cannot have them.

In my darkest moments, I want to save him from that mosque that tells him what he feels is wrong, I want to drag him from that family that tells him who he is is dirt. In my cruellest moments, I blame him for letting bigots and fiction take from us our lives.

In the moments when heartbreak does not ban sense, I just want him to have it all. To have their love whilst embracing mine, and to know that he deserves nothing less. I want him to know he is perfect, the most beautiful being just as he is. I want to tell him that now and have him be able to hear it, to listen to the words and have him believe it.

...

"Your family adore you Sy."

"Not so much when I keep screwing up," he murmurs, squashed into the sofa with his eyes focused on the cushion resting on his lap. "I don't know how I do it sometimes, if there's a way to mess up I'll find it," he says, with a gentle forced laugh.

"It was just a stupid mix up with the order, not even your fault. It'll have been forgotten by tomorrow."

"Yeah..."

"Can't be easy, all working together, living under the same roof," I offer, hoping humour will take that crumpled frown from his gorgeous face. "If that was my whole family, I'd have murdered my mother by lunch time. Ian's not even related to me and most days I feel the same."

He gives a gentle laugh and lifts his gaze like I have helped. "It's different for us...normal to be close like that, I mean...living together, involved in each other's lives. Not just normal I mean...it's nice," the words drift wistfully, "not all the time, you know," his lip curls honestly "but...nice."

"You must have missed it, then. Before?" I say tentatively. I feel the worry of pushing too far, but he's opening up, and it's so rare yet so wonderful I cannot help but try to grab it.

"It was ok," he shakes the truth away, "every young guy's dream living away from home right. Stay out all hours and leave the place in a mess."

"Yeah that sounds right," I laugh for him, sensing that that time just isn't a place he wants to go. "The past sixth months though…things have been ok being back at home?"

"I don't know...I have a mum that thinks I can do nothing wrong and a dad who thinks I can do nothing right…I'm not sure where I sit in that," he smiles nervously and fiddles with his hands in that way I've learnt means the word's are hard. "It's fine. I mean, things are a lot better now, compared to...I'm lucky they let me back home...I'm really lucky. They're everything to me."

...

I find myself with home in sight, and cannot help but wish my ghost were placed inside. I am aware of why his real body is not there, why tricks and dreams is the depth for which can be hoped. He has retreated to stop all from hurting, like he always did, but it does not stop our hearts from aching, it never could.

We are friends now, I remind myself, it was at my request. It felt unnatural to not even have that, though there is nothing natural in the claim that that is enough. There is nothing natural in the fact that he is with her when I love him and know him more than she could ever hope.

"Christian!"

A few metres from the safety of blue door, I hear another one of the voices I have avoided for months; the mother he loves but I cannot help but hate.

"Christian!"

It sounds again and I turn on a sigh.

"I'm walking home Zainab, no need to have a fit, I'll be out of your sight in mere seconds."

"I wanted to see you."

"Excuse me?"

"I thought you should hear the news."

I know not to bite, but I can't help but say it. "News?"

"Yes, it's wonderful news really. Syed and his _wife_, they are moving away."

My nightmare presents itself in a sentence and my heart scrambles to find its way through the pain. Sense of mind tells the panicked beat to hush: the threat may be terrifying, but it does not feel true.

"Amira's father provided a wonderful opportunity for the two of them, a new business venture he's starting...he requested Syed specifically. Family you see, they see the good in you _and they will do anything to maintain it_. Of course I shall miss him endlessly, but caring for someone, if that is what we claim to do, _we will let them go won't we_..." She drifts off "...and I know with his own business and his wife, the love of his life, he will be happier than ever."

"I haven't got time for fantasy land Zainab, I've got better things to do," I say, turning to home.

"And so now has Syed..._away from you_."

I freeze on the spot.

These are the dark moments when, in the face of suffocating interference and torturous lies, I would drag him from her in a heartbeat…if only he would let me.


	18. Chapter 18

_**AN:**__** This chapter is set the night after Zainab told Christian that Syed and Amira were moving away. Three days have passed since we last saw Syed, and like Christian, we know nothing of what has happened since. **_

_**Told in **__**Syed POV **_

_**Thanks so much for all the favourites, alerts, and reviews. With only three chapters left after this one, it's especially lovely to know that you're reading – letting me know what you think with a review is really appreciated. **_

Darkness sweeps the sky, night stillness swamps the air, but all senses are awakened and the moonlight wraps my skin.

I stand outside my lover's door.

Time may have stood still. It might have been minutes or my feet may have been stuck here without motion for hours upon hours. It is a possibility that I have been standing waiting to knock on this door for an entire year of my life.

I will the door to open.

I have no plan or calm thought of what I would do or say, all I know is I just want that door to open. I want him to take me by the hand, pull my body inside, and hold me. I'm sick of having to place my arms around her, and that I feel nothing is only part. It is the expectation, it is the loss. With the comfort of protection, I want arms to wrap me, I want_ his_. I need him to press his kiss to my hair, give his warm hands to bind my back and tell me everything will be okay.

He once told me it was all okay.

I stood bare foot, alone, with a ring on my hand and he told me it would be okay. The shake in his voice as he said it betrayed the fact it wasn't. We were not together, how could it be. I was standing at the beginning of the end of me, and I was afraid. But he said it, he said it because he is brave and he loved me enough to protect me when I had needed it like no other.

I need it now.

I know it is not his role to save me. I let myself be led to seal this trap, he gave me every chance to be freed. It doesn't change that I need him though, it does not move my feet from his door. I am still here, there is nowhere else I will ever be.

The sound of a lock turning rattles through the silence and, as if to say I have lost my mind, he is at once in front of me.

"Sy?"

"Hi," I stumble out, in simple awe of the sight of him.

"Are you ok?"

He asks me what it is I need, but I suddenly feel a fool; he stands there stunning in the simplest of dress, I imagine ready to meet someone new.

"Yeah...yeah I'm...I'll leave you to it, you're going out..."

"No."

"What?" I ask in confusion.

"I'm not going anywhere."

My selfish heart drums beats of relief at words I know will never cease to help me breathe.

"I saw you," he says. "Out the window...I saw you looking at the door."

"I wasn't," the words spurt out with a little more desperate insistence than I had hoped. "I was just...in a dream or something. Long hours at the Unit, and it's late...I was just dreaming."

He leans towards me in the slightest move and speaks lower, as if to ensure every cell can hear.

"_Or_...or you were standing outside my door, wanting to come in, trying to get the nerve to press the buzzer."

My lips part and close on an exhale of breath, no words able to form.

"I tell you what," he says, holding the door open in soothing temptation. "...I've saved you the job now. Might as well come up." I feel his eyes glance up from my fumbling feet as he tellingly adds, "Sometimes standing still isn't the best thing Syed...or even walking away for that matter."

"Do you want a drink or something?" he calls, walking towards the kitchen. "I was making tea."

I can hear words, like this is normalcy, like this is real. One moment I was outside alone and the next I'm through the door. The last few days of half-life have been a blur, like no others before. I was no longer able to be there with them to the extent that I wonder if I am really here.

This flat was more a home to me than that house I stay in now. With my eyes scanning every corner, every nuck, my mind races back to the hundreds of moments I spent here with him. It rests with love on the last time I was in this place, the last words we said, the last touch I had. And now I am finally back here...and he is offering me tea.

"Tea is...lovely thank you," I manage.

"Good, I made you one while you were thinking," he says, walking back towards me with the edges of a relaxed smile. "Here." Our hands meet as I am passed a familiar mug and electric tinged heat sparks from the touch.

Slow seconds pass. We stand with tea, no one quite settled, or perhaps confusingly so.

After all that has passed, it seems strange it has come to this, a calmness, a still. It feels as if in this moment there should be a song, it feels as if this moment should be greeted by a song, as if the stars should play, as if I should demand they know I have returned here, that they should dance at the spectacle now they do.

Perhaps they are right to calmly glimmer. This love was never just a love that took breath away, that heated, that screamed, that rushed…it was a love that let weary minds rest, that flowed, that soothed, that hushed. I can't help but long for an end to the quiet though, to hear his silken voice warm the silenced air.

His lips hear my plea, he begins to speak, and I am deafened by the quietest sound.

"Is this goodbye then?"

"Goodbye?" I question, afraid. If I found the words it would be the last thing I would say.

"You're moving apparently, out of Walford."

I feel my head shake, as if to reject the terror of the words wordlessly. I scramble to find why he would think that, whether his calmness is saying he wanted it if it were true.

I am staring at the sofa, trying to ground myself in comforting memory, as over my racing haze I hear the explanation.

"Or so says your mother."

...

"_My mother-in-law controls __our lives and it has to stop!" _

Scrunched down into sofa cushions and the soft blanket of his dressing gown, I glance from the raucous screen to the calmness of his state.

Hair fluffed, stubble settling, and cereal bowl on his lap, staring at the television like it holds all the world's answers. He is pretending that this is fine, and I have let him, but to care for him now means a gentle nudge, no matter the pout it may produce.

"How about we shut Jeremy Kyle off?" I say, attempting to prize him from his newfound morning routine.

"Nah, there's a paternity test coming up I need the result of. A woman's finding out if the father of her triplets is her boyfriend, neighbour or pet goat. It's all very tense."

I squash down my muffled laugh, attempting composure and discipline rather than the encouragement my adoring sound must give. I ignore the unbelievable desire I have to kiss him, instead saying "I imagine it is," whilst failing miserably to hide my smile.

"I'm betting on the neighbour. _He looks virile_."

"Why pick one?" I play. "Maybe each triplet has a different dad."

"Now you're just being stupid Syed."

I give a little frown, my bottom lip deciding to be the one to pout in absence of his sulk.

"Aww poor Sy," he strokes a hand down my cheek, his warm parted lips soothing mine with a slow measured kiss. "No matter what the DNA results say, we'll say you're right."

...

"Did you believe her?" I say, desperate for him to know I could never leave.

"It hardly matters what I think," he murmurs, eyes sliding to the floor.

"It always matters what you think."

The truth produces in him a little smile that makes my heart dance, and he says with a promise, "No, I didn't believe her Sy."

"Good because it isn't true and she had no..."

"But it will be won't it..." I stare out at him with unjust, but the words he thinks are real persist "...true..._one day_. One day you'll move out of home, away from here, to start your proper life together."

To my continual ache, I am aware that over the past several months, and the last few days, he has only seen what I have shown him, the desperate pretence I have given him. I have not let him see, he does not truly know, yet I cannot help but wonder how he could ever think they'd be more than a shadow of life, if it were one without him in it.

"And whether I hear it from your mother or your wife, or you come to my door and stand there just as you are now and tell me yourself, the result's the same," he tells us. "You'll be gone...properly gone, and I'll be left here."

I could not leave him if I tried.

Partings, ceremonies, prayer or denial, nothing has taken him from my skin; mere distance never could. Perhaps it is unnatural to, perhaps they never should.

My eyes trail to the bed, the sheets made but unable to erase from me endless conversation and caress. He was my first, my only. How can you leave the first you ever loved, or truly knew and loved you in return.

...

"First album?"

We sit in crumpled sheets, my bare back leaning to press his chest, my legs resting within his own.

"Blur," I state. "…the first one."

"Firstly, your first album was Brit Pop?" He says incredulously, twisting his head to ask "How old _are you_?"

"Youthful," I smile.

"Secondly, you're lying. No one's first album is credible. It'll have been something like Boyzone."

"I think that your mind went to Boyzone says more about you than it does me."

"And I think he protests too much," he murmurs into my shoulder skin. "Your first CD had Ronan Keating on it didn't it, admit it?" His lips part to let teeth start to graze; I fall back into the softest of interrogations.

"Don't hate me because CD's had been invented by the time I bought my first album."

"Shut up," I feel him grin.

"I think you're just sulking because I didn't believe you had your first snog at ten."

"And you're sulking because I didn't believe you couldn't remember yours," he teases with a nudge.

"Moving on...First celebrity crush?" I stumble upon.

"George Michael," he declares proudly, "I _knew_ before anyone else did."

I shake my head with a gentle eye roll.

"Of course you did Christian..."

...

"Christian, I..."

"Why did you come here Syed?" he asks softly but plainly, standing in front of me with a look that says he just needs simple truth. "I thought when you were standing out there you at least knew that."

"I came for you," I spill out, my heart fluttering at the joy of being given the right to have its desires put into words.

His crystal eyes spark, as if with those words he knows I am so endlessly in love with him, and that since he awoke my heart, there has been no breath or beat in which I have not been.

I stand for him as he walks to me, his gaze fixed on mine whilst his body takes the distance between us that begs to be broken. My own simply waits as he finds me, wanting the feel of his so desperately it cannot move.

Every cell sings for him as he pauses a breath from my skin, tingle turning to tremble at the feel of his mesmeric mouth hovering next to the need of mine.

His heat washes over me. Sensing the memory of his mouth's caress, my craving lips begin to part. The needing move floods me with fantasy as it always did, my mouth a knowing heartbeat from the loving worship of his touch, the bliss drenched damp strokes of his taste.

As they wait for him in a needing quiver, I feel the warmth of a gentle kiss press open upon my cheek.

He whispers onto my skin as my lips mourn the loss, "If only I thought you were ready for that."

I can only watch as he turns from me, the walk back to safety slow and aching.

"They'll be wondering where you've got to, you should probably get home..." his back advises.

His voice is calm and almost protective. I find myself agreeing with a quiet "Yes…" though unsure whether I have done so because I wish to do what is best for him or because I trust him to know what is best for me. Regardless, my legs conform to the request he has made of them and I turn.

And then, as with the turn of a lock I let the outside in, from the haven of his surroundings I hear him say…

"No matter what they've told you Sy, no matter how they've made you feel, you're beautiful and you deserve to be happy."

The words hang over me as I walk from his door. For the first time, my heart tells my mind to let them be believed.


	19. Chapter 19

_****Thank you for previous reviews. This story is now drawing to a close, with two chapters remaining. Comments as it ends are really appreciated.** **_

_**Set the morning after the last chapter, in which Syed found himself in Christian's flat. **_

_**Told in **__**Syed POV**___

Last sleep I gave my night to him. I have given so many of my nights to him, it could be said that it is natural, that in doing so last night I made my way back to him.

In the past year of my life, I gave him my rest, my dark, my stars, for countless nights, when I was with him…or without.

When I was with him, it was the movement, when I would be in his bed, when we would explore the other's soft offered frame, when he would press open mouth to skin for stolen hours, when I would murmur his name like it were a song…and it was the still, when I would be in his hold, when we would rest as if bliss must be preserved, when his calming breaths and drumming heart were the only sounds. When I was without him, it was when he was gone, when I was in my bed, when I was with my wife and never more alone, and I would lay awake in my trap hoping for him and knowing that now I had sealed its lock, he would not come.

Last night was different.

I was without him but never more close to him. I was within a whisper of being within his sheets, soothing the darkness with his body laced and wrapped through mine. I was within a kiss of ridding myself of this conformity and finding my liberation in his caress.

Yet he sent me back here.

I offered him my night, and in the back of my heart, all the nights after, and he sent me back here. In me, he saw I was not ready. He saw because he knows me; because he has wanted to, because in my weakest or perhaps strongest moments, I have let him.

Last night I gave my sleep to him and I asked myself if he saw that I had never been more ready, that to stand in front of him I had clawed at the trap I had made, and if it weren't for their pain, I would have run straight through it.

The sound of heavy footsteps treads the floor and in the corner of my distracted eye, I see a shadow pass my door. It's the shadow that since last night I have wanted, that I love endlessly but will not run from, and my legs do not need ordering to find their way to its trail.

I walk from the coldest of bedrooms. As my feet stalk through the frame of its door, I cannot help but think it should only be called a room in which there lies a bed. I shake my head regrettably at the thought and stand at the entrance to a room whose love deserves its name, a marital space whose warmth is natural and enviably true.

My mother sits with her back to me and I say, "I didn't think you were up…I've been looking for you, where have you been?"

"I could ask you the same question", she mutters, without turning to see my face. "I have been where I always am Syed, taking care of this family. The restless night Kamil had means I know you cannot same the same."

She stands up and says to my eyes, in a tone that almost speaks of defeat, "So what about you Syed…where have you been?"

I will not hide a thing.

"I was at Christian's."

She shakes her head and mutters slowly, gracing me with the motherly expression of disappointment merged with the absence of surprise, "At his."

"At _Christian's_. I was at his flat, in his home talking and he told me that you had been doing some talking of your own."

Her eyes flicker as if it means something, as if the realisation of being caught or I could hope, the break of my voice, has for a moment shaken her.

I am past the point where I can crush myself for her protection though and the honest words simply tumble, "You told him that I was moving, that Amira and I had this wonderful new life to get to and would be leaving to start that any day now."

"Lower your voice Syed, your baby brother is sleeping," she hushes, walking out of the bedroom and pulling the door behind her.

We stand in the hall way and I tell myself to breathe. I am too aware it now goes beyond tempered frustration and the raising of voices but with the ache that rings through me I know I cannot be ignored.

"This isn't yelling Mum, this is me talking, this is me actually talking to you. I've done it before but you just choose not to listen. Sometimes you barely register my presence, and now it seems you would prefer to be near anyone but me…" My words catch in my throat for a moment, the times she spurned my touch flooding through my mind, from that first hug to all the craved affection after.

"You'd prefer to talk to anyone...even Christian." I say his name, and at the flashing sight of his face, I ask the futile question that has sat on my tongue for hours. "How could you go to him, how could you tell him those sort of lies? _Why?_"

"Because they don't have to be lies Syed, that is exactly the point."

"You think saying them out loud makes them true? You think saying that we're this regular newlywed couple makes us that? If you hadn't noticed Amira hasn't been here for two nights Ma…she went to her father's. Yes she said she'd come back but she still went…and she did it because she is not happy. I try, I have tried everything I can, _but I cannot make her happy_…because I can't make myself happy."

My voice lowers as I give life to thoughts I had not deemed worthy of words, until this moment came in which I would know they deserved to fill the air.

"I am not happy,"

"Yet, but you will be…"

"How does going to Christian, hurting him like that make me happy?"

"Because by going to him, by telling him that you were moving away, moving on then maybe, just maybe, he would leave you be…and you would do the same."

I look at her bewildered, racing through the past months where despite the painful ache, we both retreated and stayed away. She only describes the life that shines behind my eyes, and my mother may claim to know everything but she does not know my mind. I form the word "What?", wondering in this moment if she has been spying on my dreams.

"You don't think I've seen you Syed?" She sighs. "You think I don't listen, I don't understand, but I do Syed, _I do_. For months I have seen you try to stay away from him, to let this…_thing_ pass. I thought you would get better, I thought that with my support and your familiar Mosque, you would have the strength to resist…_I was wrong_."

I don't know if I've ever heard those three words from her, but in tracing over the ones she uttered before them, I don't think I wish to hear them again.

"I knew four days ago," she says, and I think back, through the haze of each day, to what had passed then. "Kamil would not settle, I took him for an early morning walk, and we walked for a while and then…then I saw you. Standing outside the pub, in the middle of the street, in full view of anyone, with him, smiling at him in a way no mother wants to see and placing your hands…_on him_."

He was right when he told me silently that their hurt is something I cannot stand, but despite the sacrifices I would make for them, I could never force myself to deny one moment that I have shared with him.

I am standing back in front of her, as if it is my wedding day, and though I have barely touched his skin, I know the caresses that daily pass my thoughts. In my mind they are beautiful, and as she stares out at me, I know they should not be marked with shame.

"I tried my best for you, I did", she promises, before I have chance to speak. "I thought small normal things would help you, arranging the meal with Amira would take your mind…but the past few days…you've been more somewhere else than ever."

She walks closer towards me and says with softness, "I understand now, you never had a chance to be happy with him here, dragging you back."

"It isn't him," I tell her. "He isn't dragging me anywhere. You have no idea what he does, what he's given up…"

"But it is still _him_ isn't it. It is him who you are thinking of when I see you Syed, only him. You can't deny that, can you?"

"No," I say, because it is.

"There is something in you that is not right Syed, my beautiful son has this ugliness inside of him, and around _him_, he brings it out, it screams out for the world to see."

I can smell her familiar motherly scent as she moves closer. "It doesn't have to be this way Syed, Allah always gives us a choice."

I watch silently as, for the first time in months, she places her hand on me. My arm is mourning the lack of warmth her touch now provides when quietly, my mum tells me what she thinks I am.

"You will move away and have a beautiful family Syed, and you will be a wonderful father. When people ask after you I will be able to tell them how proud I am of my Papoo," she promises.

"There is no greater love than a mother for her son and no person will ever know you more. _I know_, that with distance, things will be better. You will be the man I know you can be."

…

The softest of kisses are pressed to my chest, marks of love scattered in the repeated warm flickering of his lips.

"You are beautiful," he murmurs onto my skin.

Barely a breath between the care of closed lips and the curve of ridged rib, there is no space to shield me from the adoration of his words. They dance their way through at the touch of his kiss and I feel the crimson flush that covers my flesh.

"Don't be silly," I mumble, with a doubting shy smile, "I'm not, I'm just…"

"_You are_," he tells me, when with the earnestness of his certainty, insistence sounds in a whisper. "You are so incredibly beautiful…and you don't even know."

I feel the worship of his promise in the seal of his kiss.

"How is it you don't know, hmmm…?"

All senses hum as the nudge of his nose strokes up my skin, the tickle with the affection awakening every little hair as it basks in the warmth.

"…how don't you know how it is you make me feel…when your eyes shine if you see me, how you just light up when you're happy…", he murmurs into my chest "…how you always listen so thoughtfully and the side of your gorgeous mouth lifts _just so_ when you're waiting all patient and quiet…"

With another press of his lips, his eyes follow them in never leaving my skin.

"…how you think the best of everyone and would do anything for them, you would try so hard…" I find myself stroking the line of his back, my hands desiring its reassurance and the haven of its strength.

"…how you ruffle that gorgeous hair in a way that's barely noticeable," he whispers, "but you do it, when you're shy or just a little hesitant…how do you not know how beautiful you really are…"

His head grazes in the dip of my throat and he places a single slow kiss to my fluttering pulse. "_Beautiful_."

He breathes the word so honestly my heart cannot help but glow as it listens.

…

Sat perched on the sofa's edge, I have rid myself of her words to another room; I thought those things for the longest time, I do not need to be told.

There were years where I had felt that way, that I was ugly, unclean, that what I felt was the most hideous of things, that if only I resisted, I could be free from. In these past months, as life stood still with the loss of him, I have grown to know it is the claim that the most precious of things is a state I am needing to escape, that is the feeling from which I should run.

I have fled it and I know that with the run my heart can breathe. As I clutch my Koran I whisper the hope that the time has come to stop running and allow myself to walk to him.

_To Be Continued… _


	20. Chapter 20

**Told in ****Syed POV**

_**Big thank you to those people who not only read, but take the time to say so. Comments for this story have always been a treat. With only one more chapter to go (and having included something for the first time), I would especially love to hear what you think. **_

_Continued… _

Restful hands cup my Koran, delicately following the engravings that cover it, tracing the words that verse through it.

It barely seems true that something so loving could lead to the hate I have felt for myself, how something so accepting could have ever made me feel so wrong. Stroking the pages under my fingertips, I think of the coldness I let others reduce this to, the whispered pleas such failings would lead me to.

Knees would fall and I would beg Allah to change me, to take from me this trial I knew I could not pass. That my heart flutters at the thought of us tells me not simply that he could never be moved from me, but that a love like this could never be a test.

I close my eyes and I can feel the beginning, the boyish flush in my cheeks when his body would brush past me, the excited rush of pride when seeing him laugh because of me.

The base of my neck still glows from the first time he wrapped his hand around it, it remembers the heat of the sweeping strength and the calming stroke of his thumb's caress. The second the softness of his guiding lips first pressed mine will be etched in the tingle of my skin forever, and the night I fully gave myself to him will play long after.

I can see the adoration in his eyes as he undressed me, the tender hold of my hand as he led us to the sheets of his bed. I can almost feel the way I moved inside them, how his touch set a craze through the fire beneath my skin.

To run from it was futile, as if letting him be with me in the most intimate of ways would not make every cell yearn for him, that from that moment I would not be undeniably his. The futility has lost its power to haunt me. I am not the same man who fled his arms, and under wet streamed lashes in the shower, scrubbed flesh that had dared to feel.

The essence of the joy I felt was the same in the first moments as it was in those still to pass. That an ache came was never because our embrace was something of disgust, but because it was truly beautiful, that an act they had said was wrong could feel to me, so incredibly right.

The thought produces a flicker of a smile, despite myself, and it is only startled away at the sound of the opening door.

"Oh I'm sorry," I see my father back track as he walks in the room, glancing down at my hands. "I didn't realise you were studying. Do you want some privacy?"

"No, no it's fine," I say, rubbing a palm quickly over my face.

"You sure? It's important, I can leave you to it."

"No, really, it's fine," I tell him, placing the verses down on the sofa arm.

"I shouldn't say it, but I'm relieved."

He sits down wearily on the squashed seat beside me and I watch him stretch out in a way I've seen him sprawl a hundred times from early rounds.

"Thought I might find a bit of peace in here, wake me up if I fall on your shoulder."

"All go at the Post Office today?" I ask, gaining some sort of comfort from the normalcy of the line. All the little things that make up our lives have been whirring through amongst my strain, and they will float and zoom no matter what move I take.

"Mmmm," he yawns. "And Kamil's crying in the middle of the night…or your mother's."

"What?" I rush, the words dragging my knowing eyes to his, the reflection in his gaze softened from being so unaware.

Perhaps stuck in the ache of the truth, ignorance has found me too. There are moments where I have thought of nothing but her pain and there are others where it is as if she has not warmth enough to feel. In this second, she is just my mum, and that either of us hurt seems simply wrong.

"Not that she thinks I notice of course," he says, "…always thinking she can sort it all out herself and that I won't see. The last few months have been a big change for her, her eldest son becoming a man…"

I look to him and he is providing me with the pride of a half-smile, and I take it, though aware it is not meant for the man that I truly am.

"…it's bound to be an emotional time, and now she's even speaking like she's willing to let you out this house," he gives a slight laugh at the truth of the joke. "You know what a leap that would be for her, well, you and your mother were always closest…"

"Not intentionally."

We both stare out at each other in the hanging quiet, neither expecting my words nor sure what to do with them now they have been spoken.

It isn't a surprise when he looks away and I stumble forward into asking, "Mum, is she upset now, you said you came in here for peace…is she ok?"

"She'll be fine," he decides. "Saw her through the kitchen door attacking the breakfast pots within an inch of their life and thought I should duck. A head strong woman, your mother…it's actually one of the things that made me fall in love with her."

"Yeah?" I say, biting back the shake of my lip into a small smile.

"Oh absolutely, it may drive me to distraction at times, but it's amongst the long list of things I would be a poorer man to live without."

He looks at me of a sudden and I feel the earnest core to his thoughts as he speaks.

"These parts of that one person we love more than anything, they're the most special things Syed and we should thank Allah for them."

_The ways in which I am in love with him have no beginning and have no end. They live past words and reasoned thought. They breathe, and soar, and sing through touch. _

"I'm sure you've got a list as long as your arm about those things for Amira."

I wish I could talk to him, beam to him that I have found that person, I have those things. I wish I could tell him that it is not my wife, that this love does not fit the form that would make them proud, and that still that scares me more than he could know.

"Dad…"

"I know. She's gone to Qadim's and not just because she wanted to see her father, no matter what your mother has been saying. It'll be okay though, I know it doesn't feel like that now, but it will be." He shifts slightly and smiles almost nervously as he says "Watch out here okay, because there's some wisdom about to be bestowed."

I curl my lip and tell him "I'm all ears," looking into his worn eyes as if I know these words may have to be played over in paternal absence times.

"Relationships _can_ get back on track Syed. We love someone, and yeah things happen along the way, and maybe we think we can never get it back, but as long as that love remains, we'll be okay."

My dad was never the one to say it, and perhaps I should not need to hear it, but we sit here and I cannot help but ask.

"You think I'll be okay?"

"I think…you should think of the last time you felt that way, and focus on that Syed," he tells me. "I suppose at your age, with everything ahead of you, it's that moment when who you want to spend that life with, made you feel that way. That last moment when everything was…right."

In standing on the edge of his caress last night, it seems both a life time and a heartbeat since I have felt purely right. I close my eyes and I am there in a dream. It was a moment of honesty, a night when I let myself be me, when I allowed my heart to be loved, and set myself free to say it. The last time I felt right was the last time I was truly with him.

…

The soft warmth of his lips drags the line of my jaw. Heated breath falls to waiting skin; with each loving kiss I am his.

The heated firm curve of his shape wraps me, the rhythm of his passion moulds me. I cannot see him but he is everywhere. I see him in the echo of the nights' past ecstasy, playing like perfection behind my bliss shut eyes. I feel him in the way his desire consumes me, in the way his warmth presses my skin.

Seasoned chill frosts the window glass, merry blur laughs through walls, but in these sheets it has never been warmer and only our murmurs litter the air.

His firm hand slowly sweeps through the strands of my hair, woven silk by the craving grace of his touch. He is saying his caress is mine, that even within the minutes when no joy could be purer, no ardency greater, there will always be more tenderness for me to find. It is promised in finger tips running through darkened waves and the gentle, lazed play of his thumb on my lobe…love that sees a tremor fall from every nerve.

The tremor flashes to sensation, it quivers to echo, and in a moan I need the sight of him. I arch my head backwards, as if the bliss he created in two rows of ecstasy has set a fire in me, as if in freeing myself with the words I formed for him, I can now crave to be a man owned by him.

Hazed lids open to his beauty, they lock in compulsive need with piercing green. In his eyes I am perfect and with each second of his gaze I become more than I will ever be. Its loss is pain but cool jade shifts to heated wet touch and he takes all thought from me. The care of his thick tongue draws the path of my shoulder skin and I am tasted like a kiss can never be enough.

Tonight, there can be no enough.

I want nothing more than to be close to him, and pull at his sheet scrunched arm to wrap my chest. On the night that my heart has never let him closer, in the moment that my body is part of his, there is no breath or touch or stare that does not beg for more. In the tight strength of the way he moves to hold me, he tells me he feels the same.

The close caress is perfection, and my heavy lids fall. In the darkness there will never be more light. I can see his smile out there in the market as I gave myself to him in a way I have truly for no other, when pure intimacy was found in words, three said on a whisper, in the glow of seasoned light and lyric bells. New intimacy followed in touch, when the same acts embraced so many times became a new display, in the hush of private and the dusk of candle glow.

With the rush, he repeats our promise in a half-breath on my skin.

"_I love you._"

…

"Can you remember times when you felt like that?"

"Yes," I say.

"Then focus on those Syed. We should thank Allah for our blessings and honour Him by embracing them."

I find myself almost smiling, as if with the words, chilled sadness will not leave but new air warms me still. In this heartbeat it is that the millions of flickers of my pulse have fluttered for this instant, that the thousands of moments of ordinary ecstasy were not meant to be regretted curses or pleasure consigned to memory, but blessings of joy that should be chased forever. I am not meant to drown, there is no sin in finding life in love's breath.

My eyes find themselves tracing the lines of the room, the hidden tear of the sofa cushion and the pattern of the rug. On a blink I can hear a little cry from Kamil upstairs, that noise he makes when he's restless and fussing. The padded footprints in the carpet are my mum as she moves up the creaking stairs to soothe him. A key will grate in the lock soon, Tam home from an early shift wearing that good natured frown. An out of tune lullaby will sing from the landing in the hour, my dad cajoled into sending his little one to dream.

Pressing my palms into the sofa seat gently, I lift myself up to stand. There is no dictated order for my legs, no perfection or spring of step, they simply rise, and I simply stand.

Memorizing eyes turn from furnishings and drapes, and find my father, staring up with wondering gaze. I part my lips to speak, and words leave to say that, after all that has gone, there is nothing more, there is nothing less.

"You know I love you all very much."

There is an ache in the knowing yet there is a strength in it too. I have no doubt what is coming, I know what this means. This is when I choose it regardless, the moment, in seeing the loss and the love, I take it by the hand, knowing that in their words I will be dead to them, but in my heart I will never be more alive.


	21. Chapter 21

_**AN: Almost a year after it began on LJ(!), this is the final chapter. Thank you to anyone who took the time to let me know what they thought, and a special thank you to the regulars who just kept on commenting. All your words have meant very much – I hope this ending (strangely rushed and very long) is vaguely like you had hoped. **_

_**This chapter ends the story as it began, being told in **__**Christian POV**__. _

I trace my fingers blindly over the neglected pillow at my side. It is cold, as it has been since the night the warmth of his body left. The cold feels different though, the loss that drapes it now more of a chill than on the first morning without him to which I woke.

Lids scrunch open at the thought of it and I drag my hand along my half-sleep hazed face to calm my frantic pulse. He was here. I blink slow and I can feel the sight of him standing at my door, breathe in the fragility of lash wide eyes. Last night was no dream, he was no ghost. I love him more than love could be but the beauty of him is such that the depths of it could not be etched even by me.

He came back to me.

He returns and he is of a sudden everywhere, as if he were waiting, as if he were dancing on the tips of my senses, and with the gifted presence of him, they are again living. Unable not to, my heart drags my nose along the crumple of the empty bed. I can smell him where he was not. He is in these sheets.

My lips grazed the kiss of his cheek last night and he has taken me, he tingles through my ridge-dipped spine and the flecks of hair on my cradled arms. I saw the doubt in his eyes and sent him away before I could take him to my bed, but I can smell him. With precious words and barely a touch, it is as if he has never left.

I want his forever.

A knock on the door sounds. It is sense wakening me, telling me to move myself, to get a grip. More rationally, it will be Jane, though with one look at me I imagine the sentiment will be the same. Squashing my head down into the sheets, I groan at the insistence of a second tap.

My breath catches for a second at realisation that no door buzzer rang. He must have left the outer door open in his haste at my masochistic suggestion that he should run, that force inside of me that sees his ache and cannot bear to use it to stop my own.

The stale whisky lacing my tongue and the truth that he is gone tells me doing the right thing is not as rewarding as they attempt to say. This is the love I am because of him, the one that kept him away when all I desired was to pull him close. I shake my head at the irony. It is the beauty of him that has, at my best, made me this man, but selflessness would barely be sacrifice if it were not with him.

With the third drum of the door, I'm forced to drag my moaning legs out the sheets and stumble, bare, out the bed.

Pulling grey bottoms on as I go, I remember the café shift I said I'd do and through the closed wood, lamely yell.

"I'm up Jane, I'm coming!"

With barely bothered sight, I unclick the door. "I'm…"

Senses that had said they were awakened feel what life is, my chest tightens as if my heart gives it no room to breathe.

Widened eyes are staring out at me and I am stolen by the depths of their gaze.

"Syed."

…

"It's looking at me funny again."

"No it really isn't," he says to the grass, unfolding the blanket with a billowed swoop.

"It is, I think it's eyeing me up Sy."

Being sure to look around me cautiously, I shiftily squash my back down against the oak.

"It's definitely the same one from last week, and the one before…it's been waiting for us by this tree since Saturday, I know it. It's obsessed with me."

"You are not being stalked by a wasp Christian."

"I am and you'll be bloody sorry when it actually does whatever it is it's planning. You'll feel really guilty then," I insist, giving him my best needing pout that at times gets me every bit of sympathy I could ever crave.

He misses my finest work though, too cutely engrossed with flattening the soil bumped-cheques that rest beneath his bended knees.

"Look now! It's staring at me all suspicious, like it wants to eat me."

"Well I can't blame it," he grins, raising his head from the fabric, his brown waves ruffled with the move, "you are quite…_delicious_."

I doubt there will ever be a time when my heart won't respond with a flutter, faced with that breath consuming look he is giving me now. That smile that is at once wide as to send beams to his flickering eyes, and subtle to be a private curl of the lip, designed for only my blessed sight.

I watch as he crawls over the blanket, the hot sun streaming down on him as if made to light his skin with that beautiful glow. Distant squeals of energetic children and neighbouring chat of lounging couples fall to nothing, and my pulse quickens as he reaches me.

"But…" he says, rolling up our newspaper meticulously, "it's probably best to send him on his merry way." With a deft swipe aimed at the ground, the harasser is left to buzz through the summer air. Strong and merciful, I think proudly to myself, my perfect love.

"Any admirer should know you are strictly taken," he smiles, stroking his thumb leisurely over the side of my cheek.

I laugh agreement into the layers of his velvet hair as my eyes squint to the streaks of sun that bathe his smile.

"You look tired…" but gorgeous, I think, stroking the base of his neck with my hand "…you've been working too hard."

"I like it, and I'm _fine_, you don't have to worry about me. Besides …" he says, turning to nestle his slight frame into the perfect fit of my arms and chest, "this feels pretty comfy thanks…I might just have a nap here…"

…

"Did I wake you up?" he asks slowly, as I twist my racing head to watch his body brush past mine; I forgive the passing thought that in the shy certainty of its movement, it is finding its way back to where it should always be.

My legs spin to let my eyes find his face, needing the grounding that only the sight of him can bring when barely sure of where I am. There is something so entirely innocent at the worried statement from his voice, as if after everything, the worst thing that could happen to us is another disrupted sleep, that with all the pain I know he feels, my lack of sleep is a brow-heavy concern. I would miss a thousand sleeps if I could wake to him.

"No, it's fine," I hear myself saying, rubbing an attempt at composure through me with a hand to my stubbled face. "I've been up a while."

He is smiling at me, gently, and in his gaze, I find myself barely aware of my aesthetic mess.

"You have…" he starts quietly, pointing a cautious finger to the top of my head, "…bed hair."

It is said so incredibly sweetly and the side of his lip curls so gently, I feel both an idiot and completely adored by him in an instant. Rubbing a hand quickly over short disarrayed tufts, I curse them under my breath for their betrayal.

With the drag of my palm down the flecked hair on the base of my neck, I am of a sudden acutely aware that I am barely dressed.

This would be the instance when most would blush and a second does pass in which I consider the strengths of convention. The thought is fleeting though, as I stand stark, pin pricks of flush refusing to cover me. Even in the sight of the one I have craved the approval of, it is not simply arrogant assurance of it that keeps them away. The widest of open eyes are staring out at me, hardly a blink from the lashes that flit. They are giving me flashes of the elation I felt in those rare times he would lay himself bare for me. In the warmth of their exposed depth, it feels as if in this moment, I should do the same.

The hue of his eyes is the darkest I have ever seen them and the way his brown curls drape his brow and stubbled jaw frames him with a depth that stills my breath. I could tell myself that he looks lighter, as if being in front of me has taken a weight from him, that he is elation, that in the night, a kiss of liberation came and lifted it all from him. It would not be true though, and as we hold a space apart, I know it need not be.

He is exactly as he should be. I wonder how I could know the state that he must be, when since the beginning I have barely known, when I have no grasp at why he stands at the feet of me. I suppose it is now as it has always been, it is purely felt. I feel the slightest edge of calmness, a peace, the smallest hint of words that need to come that it has never been my role to push.

"I'm sorry…" he says suddenly, and the words tumble to rip the gentle silence "…about last night."

"Don't be," I shake my head with the sink of my heart; he shouldn't have to apologise, and I shouldn't be such a fool as to think his standing here would be for a purpose greater than that.

"It's not like I haven't wanted you to come here when you needed it, _asked_ you to even," I murmur, beginning to turn. "You don't have to be sorry for coming…"

"_For leaving_. I'm sorry for leaving last night."

My legs still and in his words, he steals my movement and my air. I cannot see him but with his voice, I can feel him, sense the little breaths of nerves laced on the strength of certainty. It has always evaded me how there was so much of him I did not understand, that he could not show me or I would not see, but that above all I saw him, every pause, every breath, every manner, were known as if they were me.

I turn back to him, breath only able to flow quicker, sunken heart unable not to rise. In the way his eyes are pouring out at me, I know that as always I can see him, but that he craves that I understand.

"You were right," he stumbles with insistence, "what you said…about me not being ready. Except, you weren't...right, that is. I just thought you were, and have been believing it for a while, _a long time_ before you said it. I do that, it seems. Tell myself something and I say it enough, and I almost believe it."

I give myself to the honesty of his words, said on a voice that is shaken but assured, as I watch the tender dance of his feet edging close.

"I've been telling myself that being a good son is being whatever they need me to be, that doing best by my wife is keeping her in this…sham, that observing Islam devoutly means, for me, living a life that isn't actually living at all. Thing, is…Christian, I don't think I believe that anymore. I don't think I believe it at all."

…

"I don't believe a word of it."

"That hurts…" I mock, stroking my fingertips down the trail of his silken spine, on impulse resting in the dip to thrust our skin to meet, "…deeply."

"This can't go on forever you know," he breathes.

"_Mmm_ I think it can," I smile into the sweet scent of his throat. "In fact," my tongue languidly licks the flickering heat of his pulse, "you're right, I was lying. Staying here forever is actually very similar to the plan I was concocting..."

Grasping his lithe tensed thighs in my hands, I encourage the firm softness of his legs to wrap around me, "We're so in tune."

"Christian..." He murmurs the sound of his voice on my name into my chest; his attempt at protest lost in the open lipped kisses he gives to the skin.

"…we _have_...to get up."

"We are..." I smirk "I think that's the problem."

"That's it," he lifts up his head, his crumpled waves deliciously wayward in the move "…talk dirty, that's the way to get food for six on the table."

"You mean it's not?"

I am given a gentle clout for my helpful tease and grin up at him widely. My laughter ripping the air is stifled for a second with the sight; a gaze that is still, after a thousand times, fully entranced by his lust flushed chest and pink plumped lips.

"Why are we always the incompetent ones," he sighs, threading long fingers through the fuzz of my chest. "…the ones who say we're going to go to that really great Thai shop but forget to get out of bed so just order the take-away type…_or…_" he adds, lowering his eyes teasingly "make ridiculous promises whilst drunk about five courses that miraculously get forgotten when sober. We have friends who must think we can barely…_dress ourselves_."

"Well no, we can do that. If only for the undressing..." I smile low, leaning up to pull his body back to me.

"We do excel at that," he murmurs, unable to protest as I kiss the line of his neck.

"It's not like we've got anything to compete with," I say, stroking the back of his velvet locks. "After that chutney and ice cream shit Michael served us last time, we give them anything above edible and we're stars. The poor deranged thing, he thinks he's the gay Heston Blumenthal."

"It's Naadir I feel sorry for. He must never eat..."

I murmur agreement supportively, nibbling along the lobe of his ear to find the most stunning taste a tongue could ever have.

"_Christian_…" he moans predictably, gorgeously.

"Yes Syed…"

My hand finds its way to running back down his golden spine and I feel him shiver on a tingle.

"We are getting in that kitchen after…"

"Oh definitely, hand on heart…"

…

If the words did not ring like long craved tolls, they would not be heard over the shameless beat of my frantic heart. After a year of us, or a forever for him, he is declaring he deserves more to life than the cage he is locked in, and if he can let his lead, I will let mine race.

When he is staring out at me as if he is ready to rip from him his own fragile world, it seems only right all caution is sacrificed, that breath can only flow quickly, that beats can only flutter with pounds.

Though a thousand thoughts consume my mind, my tongue sits empty, it seems forgetting how to speak. Every fibre in me could be dedicated to the thudding drum of my heated pulse, or my lips could know to let his speak. I can't help but want to kiss the shyness of his steps, his feet still shuffling under worn out jeans, but I force myself to accept restrain. This is not when I save him or tell him how it should be; it is when I start to listen, when I am there for him as he begins to set his own self free.

"I've been terrified for so long…" he bares open, eyes laced with a sadness I cannot help but wish in this moment, would cease to be.

"…but I think that's okay, because thinking of being myself, when it is so difficult and when it hurts so many people, people I _love_, it is actually terrifying. The thing is though, that does scare me still, I won't lie, it does…but what really scares me, what keeps me awake at night now is the thought of what it would be like to not be myself, what it will be like in a year, or five, or twenty. What it would be like to crush this part of myself for my whole life, to pretend…forever."

I watch as he edges almost next to me, as, in every way he takes the final steps that have cruelly taken him from me.

"Pretending I am the person they need to be, pretending I am not completely in love with you, for another minute let alone forever…that terrifies me."

...

Bent over in puzzled terror, lamenting the offensive ugliness of a stranger's carpet, I hear the puffy groans of stumbling legs and failing arms.

Turning on a crouch, I can only grin at the sight as chocolate waves bob and peak, a giant cardboard box covering much else.

Seeing the cute precariousness turn to outright wobble, I stop admiring and leap to catch it.

"Allow me," I say, reaching both hands to firmly rest under the base of the box.

"Thank you very much but I am quite capable. I may not be quite at your seismic levels of muscle, but I'm not a complete weed."

"No need to convince me. You, Syed Masood, are a man of the utmost power. Lithe and firm and ever so…_forceful._" Through the opaque cardboard, I see the roll of his eyes to meet my grin. "It's just when I said help me bring in the last of the stuff, I meant something in proportion to your size…like a book."

"Cute."

I grin at the muffled sound and decide it may be time to gently nudge male pride, taking the weight of the box from his struggling hands.

"Yes I am," I agree, heaving it onto the remaining scrap of the littered floor.

"Oh it's you," I mock grin, turning back to meet his newly visible face. "I'm ever so glad," I kiss onto his pink plumped lips. "I thought my gorgeous boyfriend had turned into a Box-person."

"Then I'd fit right in here wouldn't I," he bemuses, surveying the war-zone like path of bags and boxes heaped up around us.

"Did you know we had this much stuff? How can two people have this much stuff? I mean seriously Christian, what is in half these boxes…"

"Porn and crack?"

"What?"

"Probably crap." I kick a box lovingly. "It's our crap though, which I think makes it that much more endearing crap. Besides, due to the most anal packing system known to man, all we have to do is look at the number on the box and look at the paper with the key on and we'll know what's where."

"Just have to remember which box we put that paper in I guess."

Laughter bursts from me, the sight of his guilty mirth prolonging its rippling glee.

"I don't even care," I tell him. "All I care about is that that giant box that you heroically carried in was number thirty six of thirty six."

My own watches in bliss as his face lights up; that beam of unrestrained happiness that I willingly live for. "That means…"

"Yep," I grin, threading my arms around the familiar curve of his waist and pulling him in to hold with me tight. "We are officially moved in."

"Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a crippling mortgage, one million boxes…" I whisper into his ear. "_All ours_."

…

He is standing a breath from me uttering our words of eternal love. Despite its present song, and those fleeting moments when cruel doubt crept in, it is not news, I always knew. It is the revelation that sees my chest barely able to calm and breathe. My love has told me that not only does his heart worship me, but that in the face of forever, his head will let him be mine.

I let my shaking hand reach out to the nape of his wave draped neck, coming alive with its silken warmth and the hum of his comforted tremble. My fingers scrunch in, adoring the familiar softness that they have craved to nestle through each empty day that he has been gone.

The tip of his nose strokes on me, and I can hear the pounding of his pulse, feel the anticipated heat upon my skin. The most beautiful lips I have or could ever taste are pausing at the need of mine and in a frenzied rush, they have pressed forward, their delicate firm embrace taking all he tells me they have desired.

His mouth widens and mine can only follow, desperate at the feel of his tongue's caress to find all of him, to worship in flicks and lathes the scent and taste that is only made for me. I feel him moan into my cheeks as he revels in the squeeze of my hands up the cloth of his back, and exhale, as in a gasp, he drags his pinkened lips from mine.

Standing breathless, time has slowed once more. It is quiet, the only murmurs are his little intakes of air and the soothing thumps of two pounding beats.

His gaze low, I watch as silently, he lifts his hand to reach the edge of my cheek. Slowly, the delicate tips of his fingers trace my skin, stroke with tenderness along my softened jaw. Dark brown lashes flittered down, he investigates the contours of my heated face. I can only hold my breath.

He looks at me.

_**And that was it. I hope you enjoyed and would love it if you let me know what you thought. Thank you for reading…** _


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